Las Ubiñas-La Mesa Natural Park

The Las Ubiñas-La Mesa Natural Park was declared a Biosphere Reserve in 2012. It comprises a mountainous territory with a relief of pronounced contrasts, in which the Peña Ubiña massif, the second highest mountain in the region after the Picos de Europa, with altitudes of over 2,400 metres, rises close to the border with the lands of León.

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 environmental values that define the park are its biological diversity and its magnificent 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, or the otter and the desman, two groups associated with watercourses of high environmental quality. Birds of prey, roe deer, deer, chamois, wolves and foxes are also part of its 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, where Cueva Huerta is located, declared a Natural Monument.

In addition to this environmental wealth, 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 castreña 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 connected the region with the León plateau.

In the surrounding villages you can still see good examples of traditional Asturian mountain architecture, with stone houses with wooden corridors. Alongside these villages 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 them under special control, as stipulated in the sectorial regulations. In the Special Restricted Use Zones they must be properly leashed and controlled.

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

Plant life

Eleven of the nineteen vegetation series that populate Asturias are represented in the Las Ubiñas - La Mesa Natural Park. Such abundance is the result of a combination of factors, such as its orographic complexity or the use that man has made of these territories. A large part of the surface area, a third of the total, is occupied by mature forests, which is proof of the good state of conservation of the plant communities. The beech forest is the dominant woodland formation, with more than seventy percent of the wooded area, but there are also oak, beech and birch woods, chestnut and holly groves.

Above the upper limit of the forest, extensive areas of pastureland dominate, used ancestrally by the inhabitants of Quirós and Lena and even by transhumant herds of Merino sheep from Castile, León and Extremadura. Three taxa included in the Regional Catalogue of Threatened Flora are preserved in the pasturelands: the Asturias daffodil, the trumpet daffodil and the gentian.

In the siliceous areas, crests and rocky areas of the subalpine floor, the subalpine communities of the high mountains are magnificently represented, such as the creeping juniper, bilberry and brecina scrub, while in the limestone substrates, together with the juniper, the bearberry and the torvisco macho are found.

There are also some endangered flora species linked to humid environments, such as the Somiedo centaury, which only appears in some very characteristic environments, the calcareous tuffs, the water star that lives in ponds and lagoons, and the variegated equisetum and the water ribbon associated with peat bogs.

Wildlife

The great biological richness of Las Ubiñas - La Mesa Natural Park makes it one of the few places where you can still see the magnificent brown bear. It is not the only Cantabrian species included in the Regional Catalogue of Threatened Species typical of this place. Within the forest mass you can see capercaillies, which share the space with other fauna of these habitats, such as wolves, wild boar, foxes, genets, wild cats, stoats and badgers. Roe deer, red deer and chamois, of great hunting interest, roam the high mountains, as do the large birds of prey that nest in the mountain ranges, such as eagles, vultures, Egyptian vultures and peregrine falcons.

The otter and the desman, included in the Regional Catalogue as species of special interest, prove with their presence the incalculable environmental value of the waters that flow through the park. The Cueva Huerta Natural Monument is a refuge for several families of bats.