Situated North of Africa, Tunisia has a surface of 164.000 Km2.

Its bio-geographical biodiversity is distinguished by the cohabitation of very diversified and contradictory landscapes.

In fact, on some hundreds of km, the visitor goes from the Sahara desert to a mountain landscape, covered with green and forests, where the most common trees are Zen and Cork oak.
 
  The sea-line is 1300km long on the Mediterranean, which gives him one of the most important marine openings in relation with its surface in Africa.

Tunisia has seven different major eco systems. 8 national parks and around 20 nature reserves are in relation with these. The eco systems are coastal, isle, humid, mountainous, steppe and desert or oases savannas.
 
 
The Tunisian coast shows a great diversity of fauna and flora because related to the great diversity of the existing landscapes.

It evolutes distinctively from north to south, going from rocky cliffs in the north to the muddy waters and the shallows of the continental southern platform, like the muddy waters from the bay of Gabes which give a shelter to something like half the hibernating birds of the Mediterranean, somewhere around 350.000 individuals.
 

Is composed by 8 major archipelagos, which hug the coast plus a multitude of small isles and islets. Together, they constitute a accumulation of specific housings, where it is not exceptional to find endemic species of fauna and flora.
  The most representative isles are those which form the archipelago of the national park of the isles Zembra and Zembretta, which gather each summer something like 90.000 Cory's Shearwater (Calonectris diomedea). These birds coming from South Africa nest here in the summer. And constitute the most important colony of eastern Mediterranean.
 
In Tunisia, the humid zones cover a surface of approximately 1.000.000 hectares distributed among others, between the seven big marine or coastal lakes and something like 30 salted continental lakes (sebkhas and chotts).

humid zones are used by various migrating birds coming from Europe and Asia.. One encounters here an impressive lot of water birds and other animal species (reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates).

The national park of Ichkeul, which represents this ecosystem, is a unique site because of its variation of salinity and its capacity of reception of migrating birds. Their number for certain species is 7 times the amount of the western Mediterranean.
 
The 5 major mountainous systems of Tunisia group the majority of forests and endemic plants of the country.

This system presents known bioclimatic differences, from North to South, from the sub humid floor to the semi dry floor. As fauna and flora are subjects to climatic changes they are much diversified. One encounters there several specific species like the mountain gazelle and the striped hyena, characteristics of the Chaambi national park.
 
 

The steppe area covers important surfaces in the center of the country, they are the intermediates between the forests of the mountainous areas and the desert in the south.

The high steppes are characterized by the presence of important layer of Alfa grass. The low steppes distinguish themselves by the presence of a remainder of savanna covered by acacia raddiana and are include several salted lakes here and there on their surface.
This was squatted before by a fauna of savanna, and remainders of it are still present, like you can see in the national park of Bouhedma, The addax antelope, the Oryx antelope, the dorcas gazelle, the Mohr gazelle, the ostrich and other pre desert species, representatives of the savanna.

One must be aware that the former Tunisian savanna sheltered several big herds of elephants. Hannibal did use them to his advantage in the Punic war.
 
The south of Tunisia is the center of a magnificent Saharan desert of two types.. One is sandy and constituted by the Grand Eastern Erg; the other one is rocky and is situated in the regions of Jeffara, Dahars and Ouara.

The Saharan desert shelters different forms of animal and vegetal life specific and endemic to North Africa. The national park of Sidi Toui and Jebil represent this ecosystem very well.
More, this desert on the level of the mountains of Tabaga of Medenine has a unique outcrop of the "marine permien of Africa" This a unique geological phenomenon.
 
 
Spread out in the desert areas, the oases represent more than 75.000 ha. Unless the intensification of agricultural activities, exceptional vegetation and some mammals, more or less accustomed to human activity can be found.

The oases, with their exuberant vegetation are a rest and food area for the migrating birds which cross the desert.