Nature in Asturias. Las Ubiñas - La Mesa Nature Park

The Natural Park of Las Ubiñas-La Mesa comprises a mountainous territory with a relief of pronounced contrasts, in which the Peña Ubiña massif rises up, near the border with the lands of León, the second highest mountain in the region after the Picos de Europa, with altitudes of over 2,400 metres.

Located in the southernmost and most central sector of Asturias, it includes the lands of the councils of Lena, Quirós and Teverga included in the Somiedo Regional Hunting Reserve..

The park's defining environmental values are its biological diversity and its excellent state of conservation. Its surface area contains examples of more than half of the plant families of Asturias, with more than a third of the area occupied by mature forests dominated by beech forests. The Cantabrian fauna is very well represented, with species such as the brown bear and the Cantabrian capercaillie, included in the Regional Catalogue of Threatened Species, o otters and desman, two groups associated with watercourses of high environmental quality. Birds of prey, roe deer, deer, chamois, wolves and foxes are also part of their animal life. Among the waters that flow through the Las Ubiñas - La Mesa Natural Park, the gorge formed by the river Val de Sampedro stands out, in which Cueva Huerta is located, declared a Natural Monument.

In addition to this environmental richness, there are also numerous cultural values. It has one of the richest cave paintings in the northwest of the peninsula (Abrigos Rupestres de Fresnedo), with pictorial representations from the Bronze Age - Iron Age. It also preserves remains from the Castro period, although its most representative elements are undoubtedly the Vía Carisa and the Camino Real de la Mesa, both Roman roads as old as the first Asturian natives, which linked the region with the Leonese plateau.

Good examples of traditional Asturian mountain architecture can still be seen in the surrounding villages, with stone dwellings with wooden corridors. Alongside these nuclei coexisted the brañas, summer grazing areas, where simple stone huts covered with tiles or broom - the teitos - were built, as well as the corros or cabanos, circular constructions with a false stone dome.

Visitors who come to the Park with pets must keep, as stipulated in the sectorial regulation, special control of them. In Special Restricted Use Areas they must be properly tethered and controlled. 

There are some routes that do not cross a Restricted Use Zone, but in general, most of them do.

It was declared a Biosphere Reserve in 2012.

Plant life

Eleven of the nineteen plant series that populate Asturias are represented in Las Ubiñas-La Mesa Nature Park. This abundance is the result of a combination of factors, such as the complexity of the terrain and the use humans have made of these territories. Much of the surface area, a third in all, is occupied by mature forests, which testifies to the good state of preservation of the plant communities. Beech constitutes the predominant forest formation, covering more than seventy percent of the forested area, although there is no shortage of oak or birch.

Hillside woods are scarce in this area, although there are examples of riverside forests made up of alder and ash groves dotted with maples. Large expanses of pastureland predominate above the timberline, ancestrally exploited by the residents of Quirós and Lena and even grazed by flocks of migratory herds of merino sheep from Castile, León and Extremadura. Three taxa included in the Regional Catalogue of Threatened Flora are preserved in these pasturelands: the Asturian daffodil, the wild daffodil and gentian.

Wildlife

The biological wealth of Las Ubiñas-La Mesa Nature Park makes this one of the few places where you can still see the magnificent brown bear. It is not the only Cantabrian species typical to this area included in the Regional Catalogue of Threatened Species. Capercaillie can be found within the park woodlands, sharing the space with other examples of wildlife common to these habitats, such as the wolf, wild boar, fox, genet, wildcat, ermine and badger. Highly prized game such as roe deer, deer and chamois roam the high mountains, as do the major birds of prey that nest on their slopes, like the eagle, vulture, Egyptian vulture and peregrine falcon. With their presence, the otter and Pyrenean desman, included in the Regional Catalogue as species of special interest, testify to the incalculable environmental value of the watercourses flowing through the park. The Cueva Huerta Natural Monument is home to several families of bats.