European animals in U.S. zoos

A temperate continent shaped by ice

Europe is the western end of the Palearctic realm, which stretches across temperate Eurasia. Because it lies in the temperate zone, its wildlife is not as rich as that of the tropics, but its many habitats and its links to Asia keep it diverse. Asian animals colonized Europe in large numbers once the continent joined Asia, and many older European lineages, including early primates, died out.

The Pleistocene ice ages pushed animals back and forth. When the last glaciers retreated about 10,000 years ago, brown bears were among the first large mammals to recolonize the land. Today Europe has about 270 mammal species, 78 of them endemic, but no endemic mammal orders.

From tundra to the Mediterranean

Arctic tundra covers the far north of Scandinavia, Svalbard and northernmost Russia. Typical animals there include reindeer, the only deer in which females normally grow antlers, along with the Arctic fox and snowy owl. Farther south, forest once covered 80 to 90 percent of the continent, and boreal and mixed forests still remain. The Eurasian lynx, the largest of the four lynx species, hunts roe deer and hares in these forests and mountains. The wolverine survives in the Scandinavian Mountains.

Mountains are refuges. The Carpathians hold Europe's largest populations of brown bears, wolves and lynxes, and the Pyrenees have endemic species such as the Pyrenean desman. Around the Mediterranean, forests have largely given way to shrublands, and about 90 percent of the region's endemic mammal genera disappeared after farming began. Dry, open hills from the Balkans eastward are home to the legless European glass lizard.

Birds on the move

About 800 bird species are recorded in Europe, 445 of them breeding there. Many are migrants: of the Palearctic breeding birds that leave for the winter, 98 percent fly south to Africa. The white stork breeds across Europe and winters in sub-Saharan Africa or on the Indian subcontinent. The red-breasted goose breeds in Arctic Siberia and winters mostly on farmland near the Black Sea. Large raptors include the Eurasian eagle-owl, one of the world's largest owls, and the cinereous vulture, the largest Old World vulture.

Living alongside people

Europe's animals have lived beside farming peoples for millennia. In many places most large animals and top predators were hunted out, and today's megafauna is much reduced. The main causes of biodiversity loss are intensive agriculture, construction and extractive industries, overexploitation and introduced species. More than a third of Europe's freshwater fish species are at risk of extinction.

Some species are being brought back. The European beaver, hunted almost to extinction, is being reintroduced across the continent, and brown bears were returned to the Pyrenees in 1996. Others remain in trouble: changes in farming and industrialization drove the white stork out of parts of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the red-breasted goose, Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, gathers more than 80 percent of its population at just five winter roost sites.