The wildlife of the Verdon

The vertical walls of the Verdon form an immense perch. Above the vultures, to which we devote a whole page, soars the golden eagle, which nests in the canyon, alongside the short-toed snake eagle — a migratory, snake-eating eagle — and the peregrine falcon, the fastest animal in the world in a dive. At night, it is the Eurasian eagle-owl, the largest nocturnal raptor on the continent, that reigns.

On the rock face itself live specialists: the wallcreeper, a small grey bird with crimson wings that climbs the cliffs like a winged mouse; the red-billed chough and the common raven; and the Alpine swift, the largest swift in Europe, which nests in the crevices. The Parc du Verdon has recorded some 180 bird species.

Beneath the turquoise surface lives a treasure: the apron du Rhône. This small fish with a pointed snout, endemic to the Rhône basin alone, has disappeared from more than eight-tenths of its original range. Rediscovered in the grandes gorges in 2001, it forms a population there isolated by the dams — one of the last in France. It is so threatened that a biotope protection order has watched over its habitat in the gorges since 2012, and a national action plan is devoted to it.

It shares the river with the brown trout, once queen of these waters, and a procession of fish of European conservation interest — Mediterranean barbel, blageon, European bullhead, toxostome — as well as the fragile white-clawed crayfish. On the banks, the Eurasian beaver, naturally returned, shapes the landscape; the Eurasian otter, absent for decades, has recently left fresh signs of its comeback. In the calm waters of the lower gorges hides the European pond turtle, our native freshwater tortoise.

The limestone is riddled with caves, and the caves are full of life. The Parc du Verdon shelters twenty-two bat species — out of the thirty-two found in France — of which fifteen frequent the gorges. The star is the long-fingered bat, a rare fishing bat that skims the water to catch insects and fry. The Esparron cave, in the lower gorges, alone shelters nearly 30% of the species’ French breeding population: more than 2,000 bats give birth there every summer. Also found there are Schreiber’s bent-winged bat, the greater and lesser mouse-eared bats, the barbastelle and the horseshoe bats. All are protected, and a biotope protection order watches over their roosts.

Away from the cliffs, the oak and pine forests and the garrigue shelter most of the terrestrial wildlife: roe deer, wild boar, red fox, red squirrel, and the chamois, which has colonised the canyon’s rocky slopes. Higher up, towards the Haut-Verdon, the marmot whistles across the alpine pastures. Since the 1990s, the grey wolf has been back in the region, quietly recolonising it.

On the reptile side, the star is the ocellated lizard — the largest lizard in Europe, up to 60 centimetres long and dotted with blue ocelli —, which basks on old walls and scree. It shares the garrigue with the green lizard, the wall lizard, two harmless grass snakes (the grass snake and the viperine snake) and the asp viper, the only viper in the Verdon.

This richness is no accident: it is protected. The Parc naturel régional du Verdon runs six Natura 2000 sites, and several species benefit from strong protections — biotope protection orders for the apron du Rhône (2012) and the long-fingered bat (2009), and a national action plan for the apron. Even insects count: the Jersey tiger moth, the marsh fritillary, the stag beetle and the great capricorn beetle are among the species that justified the canyon’s protected status.