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Sierra de la Culebra

Portuguese-Spanish mountain range

Field	Value
name	Sierra de la Culebra
other_name	Serra da Coroa
photo	Sierra de la Culebra Peña Mira.jpg
photo_caption	Sierra de la Culebra from afar
country
highest	Peña Mira
elevation_m	1243
parent	Montes de León
map	Iberia
subdivision2_type	State/Province
map_caption	Location in Portugal and Spain
location	Vinhais and Bragança municipalities District of Bragança
Zamora Province, Castile and León
coordinates
geology	Slates
age	Ordovician
orogeny	Variscan orogeny
length_km	95
length_orientation	ENE/WSW
width_km	32
width_orientation	NNW/SSE

Zamora Province, Castile and León The Sierra de la Culebra, or Serra da Coroa (in Portuguese), is a mountain range in Castile and León, northwest Spain, and northeastern Portugal. It lies 7 km south of Puebla de Sanabria in the comarcas of Aliste, Sanabria and La Carballeda (Zamora Province), as well as Vinhais and Bragança municipalities in the District of Bragança. Its highest point is 1243 m high Peña Mira, located near Flechas, within Figueruela de Arriba municipal term; other important peaks are Miño Cuevo 1211 m and La Pedrizona 1054 m.

The Sierra de la Culebra is a 95 km long regular mountain chain of medium height, forming a natural border with the Portuguese region of Tras os Montes on its western end. Its slopes are wooded, occasionally ravaged by forest fires. The summits of the range are often covered with snow in the winter and there are odd-looking rocky quartzite outcrops on them.

Among the rivers in Spain and Portugal having their source in Sierra de la Culebra, the Castro River, Tera, Tuella, Sabor and Maçãs (Manzanas), deserve mention.

These mountains are famous as one of the few remaining strongholds of the Iberian wolf.

Subranges

The Sierra de la Culebra is a southeastern prolongation of Sierra Segundera, at the southern fringes of the Macizo Galaico-Leonés. The western prolongations of Serra de Montezinho or Maciço de Montesinho, Sierra de la Gamoneda () and Sierra del Marabón () are part of the Sierra de la Culebra mountainous system. Other subranges are Sierra de las Cavernas, Sierra de los Cantadores and Sierra de las Carbas, located on the Spanish side.

One important feature is the Rock of the Three Kingdoms dividing three ancient Iberian kingdoms in the Serra de Marabón subrange.

Natural reserves

On the Portuguese side the area of the Sierra de la Culebra range is included in the Montesinho Natural Park.

The Reserva de Caza de la Sierra de la Culebra, is a national hunting forest reserve on the Spanish side. Controversially, the wolves are protected in the reserve in order that they may be shot by sportsmen on payment of a fee of several thousand Euros. This process is defended on the grounds that it helps pay for the upkeep of the reserve and thus the protection of the species as a whole. The number of wolves authorised for hunting each year in Spain is strictly controlled, the auction being carried out in Villardeciervos, but many more are shot illegally.

In the Sierra de la Culebra reserve, wolves may occasionally be observed when attracted to a bait-station, known locally as a Muladar, where remains of dead horses and donkeys are put out for them.

On the Sierra de la Culebra reserve there is a healthy population of the wolves' main prey species - roe deer, red deer and wild boar. The presence of the carcasses put out for the wolves also attracts spectacular raptors such as the griffon vulture.

There are also small colonies of Vipera latastei and Coronella austriaca, which perhaps gave the mountains their name.

Gallery

|File:SerradaCoroavistadetuizelo.JPG|Sierra de la Culebra seen from Tuizelo, on the Portuguese side |File:Puebla de Sanabria04.jpg|The border between Spain and Portugal on the road that crosses the western fringe of Sierra de la Culebra in Vinhais municipality |File:Rihonor de Castilla (painel com mapa).JPG|Map of the Natural Reserve at Rihonor de Castilla

References

[http://www.ecologistasenaccion.org/article17520.html La Sierra de la Culebra. Tras la cuna del lobo]
[https://www.signatus.org/docs/situation.pdf Signatus]
[http://geosite.jankrogh.com/borders/portugal_other.htm Penedo dos Três Reinos («The Rock of Three Kingdoms»)]
[https://www.iberianature.com/spainblog/category/wolves/ Iberia Nature - Wolves]
[https://www.iberianature.com/spainblog/category/sierra-de-la-culebra/ Iberia Nature ]

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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