Macizo de Tagant

Fauna

The environmental diversity resulting from the lagoons and their associated vegetation (savanna, reedbeds, riverine woodlands etc.), and the contrast between these and the desert, ensure that the Tagant Plateau enjoys great faunal diversity. Spectacular concentrations of birds occur on its lagoons and its pools are excellent places for seeing and photographing animals during the dry season. Crocodiles apart, they are visited almost constantly by many butterflies and birds which use them as drinking places. The boulders around the pools are usually full of agamid lizards and they are occupied by colonies of hyraxes or of gundis, rare African rodents.

The pools are also good places for seeing the semi-wild domestic animals which roam the region, when they come to drink. It must be said that it was human intervention since the end of the 1970s and not environmental deterioration which drastically reduced the gazelle populations as well those of their principal predators, the leopard (Panthera pardus) and the striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena, greatly reduced).

The lion (Panthera leo), disappeared early in the 20th century, as well as other large vertebrates including the elephant Loxodonta africana)), although their former presence is recalled by place names. Much the same may be said of the houbara bustard populations, hunted to extinction in the 1980s. Nonetheless, sightings of some large mammals may still be made occasionally.

The insect life is very striking, especially where the vegetation is richest in the more humid, cooler areas such as the palm groves. The beetles, wasps and butterflies are the most noteworthy.

List of illustrated animals