Morro de Areia Nature Reserve () is a nature reserve covering the southwestern coast of the island of
Boa Vista in
Cape Verde
Cape Verde or Cabo Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an island country and archipelagic state of West Africa in the central Atlantic Ocean, consisting of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of about . These islands ...
.
[Protected areas in the island of Boa Vista]
- Municipality of Boa Vista, March 2013 It takes its name from the hill ''Morro de Areia'', elevation. The natural reserve covers 21.31 km
2 of land area,
[Resolução nº 36/2016]
Estratégia e Plano Nacional de Negócios das Áreas ProtegidasNature reserves in Cape Verde
/ref> and stretches along the coast from the Praia de Chaves in the north to the Praia de Santa Monica in the south.[ The reserve includes a 300 m wide marine protection zone, an additional 4.36 km2.]
Fauna
The nature reserve was established in order to protect the sand dynamics of the dunes, and endemic wildlife species including red-billed tropicbird
The red-billed tropicbird (''Phaethon aethereus'') is a tropicbird, one of three closely related species of seabird of tropical oceans. Superficially resembling a tern in appearance, it has mostly white plumage with some black markings on the wi ...
, osprey
The osprey (; ''Pandion haliaetus''), historically known as sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk, is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey with a cosmopolitan range. It is a large raptor, reaching more than in length and a wingspan of . It ...
, turtles
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines, characterized by a special shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Cryptodira (hidden necked turtle ...
, nurse shark
The nurse shark (''Ginglymostoma cirratum'') is an Elasmobranchii, elasmobranch fish in the family Ginglymostomatidae. The conservation status of the nurse shark is globally assessed as Vulnerable species, Vulnerable in the IUCN Red List, IUCN L ...
, and numerous invertebrates
Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordate subphylum ...
.[
]
See also
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morro Areia
Areia
Geography of Boa Vista, Cape Verde
Protected areas of Cape Verde