Corsica is a French island in the Mediterranean Sea, the fourth-largest in that sea after Sicily, Sardinia and Cyprus, covering 8,680 km² and lying 11 km north of Sardinia across the Strait of Bonifacio, 90 km from Tuscany and 170 km from the Côte d’Azur. It is 183 km long and 83 km wide, with about 1,000 km of coastline. A single mountain chain fills two-thirds of the island, rising to Monte Cinto at 2,706 m with around 120 other summits above 2,000 m. Nature reserves cover about 3,500 km², roughly 40 percent of the island, much of it inside the Parc naturel régional de Corse created in 1972. That mountain-and-sea mix supports the Corsican nuthatch, the only bird species endemic to the island and to metropolitan France, alongside mouflon, a reintroduced Corsican red deer, bearded vultures, ospreys and Hermann’s tortoises. It is also one of France’s 18 regions, with a population estimated at 365,636 in January 2026.
The island’s geology sets out those habitats. A granite backbone on the western side rose about 250 million years ago, and around 50 million years ago sedimentary rock was pressed against it to form the schists of the east. Climate and vegetation then stack in altitude bands: a Mediterranean coastal zone below about 600 m with holm oak and cork oak, a cooler montane forest zone from 600 to 1,800 m, a subalpine belt of small trees, heath and fern from about 1,750 to 2,100 m, and an uninhabited high alpine zone above that. Each section below follows one band and the animals that define it.
Scandola and the Gulf of Porto: Red Cliffs, Ospreys and Lost Monk Seals
The west coast is the island’s granite edge, and its wildest stretch is the Scandola Nature Reserve. Established in 1975, it covers 19.19 km², of which 9.19 km² is land and 10 km² is sea, between Punta Muchillina and Punta Nera, and includes the capes of Girolata and Porto. In 1983 UNESCO listed the Gulf of Porto section of the regional park as a World Heritage Site for its scenery, its Corsican shrubland and its bird and marine life. No path reaches Scandola; visitors come by boat from Galéria or Porto.
Its cliffs, grottoes, sea stacks and inaccessible islets are a refuge for birds of prey, above all the osprey. Hunted, robbed by egg collectors and poisoned by pesticides across France in the 20th century, the species held on in Corsica with only three or four pairs in 1974. Under monitoring by the French bird protection league, the LPO, the Corsican population now averages about 25 breeding pairs. Peregrine falcons and blue rock thrushes are among the other cliff-loving birds on the island’s list.
Underwater, the strong currents of the Gulf of Porto gather large shoals of fish, and precious red coral grows along the rocky shallows. One species did not survive: Mediterranean monk seals once lived along the Scandola coast but have since disappeared. On land, the cliff-top grassland and tall maquis show the scars of past fires and farming, which is why the reserve is kept strictly protected to let it return to a natural state.
The Laricio Pine Forests of Aïtone and the Corsican Nuthatch
Inland and uphill from the Gulf of Porto, the montane zone is the realm of the Corsican pine, Pinus nigra subsp. laricio, a tall subspecies of black pine native only to Corsica, Sicily and the southern Apennines of Calabria. The forests between 600 and 1,800 m belong to the Corsican montane broadleaf and mixed forests ecoregion, where oak, pine and deciduous broadleaf trees give a landscape closer to northern Europe than to the coast below. The Aïtone forest in Corse-du-Sud is one of the places where tall old laricio still stands.
A bird found only on Corsica
These old pines are the whole world of the Corsican nuthatch, Sitta whiteheadi, the only bird species endemic to metropolitan France. About 12 cm long, bluish-grey above and greyish-white below, with an all-black crown on the male, it feeds high in the laricio canopy on pine seeds and flying insects. The ornithologist John Whitehead collected the first specimen on 13 June 1883 while watching alpine swifts, and the species carries his name.
Pairs hold the same territory of 3 to 10 hectares all year and dig their nests in the rotten trunks of old pines, often reusing holes started by great spotted woodpeckers, laying five or six eggs in April or May; the young fledge after 22 to 24 days. The range runs from the Tartagine-Melaja forest in the north to the Ospedale forest in the south, with the densest numbers in the Monte Cinto, Monte Rotondo, Monte Renoso and Monte Incudine massifs, plus isolated groups in the Castagniccia and the Cagna mountains. With an estimated population of about 2,000 birds, possibly in moderate decline because of habitat fragmentation and the loss of old nest trees, it is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN.
Salamanders of the mountain streams
The same forests hold two endemic amphibians. The Corsican fire salamander, Salamandra corsica, glossy black with yellow blotches and 120 to 300 mm long, lives mainly in deciduous mountain woods of sessile oak, downy oak and sweet chestnut, though it has been found near sea level in the Calanques de Piana. The Corsican brook salamander, also endemic, lives in rocky streams, springs and rivers in forest and maquis above about 600 m.
Monte Cinto to Bavella: Mouflon, Bearded Vultures and Returning Red Deer
Above the forests, the high granite massifs belong to grazing animals and the birds that clean up after them. The Corsican mouflon, muvra in Corsican, is a wild sheep of the mountains, but its history is human: it first appears in the late Neolithic and descends from feral flocks of early domestic sheep brought by herders to Corsica and Sardinia. Only two populations remained, in the Monte Cinto massif in the north and the Bavella massif in the south, until a third group was released in the Cagna massif from 2019. Mouflon introduced to the Alpes-Maritimes on the French mainland now number around ten thousand, far more than on Corsica.
Overhead flies the bearded vulture, or lammergeier, called altore in Corsican. In France it is present in the Pyrenees and the Corsican mountains, and it has been reintroduced to the Alps and the Cévennes. Like the griffon vulture, it acts as a natural sanitation service by scavenging carcasses, which limits the spread of disease. Golden eagles and red kites are also on Corsica’s list of birds of prey.
The red deer has the most dramatic story. The Corsican red deer, Cervus elaphus corsicanus, is a small, short-legged subspecies with antlers usually under 80 cm, brought to Corsica from Italian stock around 2500 to 3000 BC. Overhunting wiped it out on the island around 1970, and fewer than 250 animals survived on Sardinia. Captive breeding began in Corsica in 1985 with 13 founders brought from Sardinia, and the herd grew to 186 in enclosures. The first animals were released into the wild in 1998 at Quenza, followed by releases at Chisa, Santo-Pietro-di-Venaco, Moltifao, Guagno, Letia, Soccia and Castifao.
By 2007 about 250 deer roamed Corsica, out of roughly 1,000 for the subspecies as a whole, which led the IUCN to downgrade it to Near Threatened; current estimates put the Corsican herd at around 800. The deer replaced an older native: the endemic deer Praemegaceros cazioti, which had lived on Corsica and Sardinia for over 450,000 years but had vanished from Corsica by the Neolithic, after humans arrived. Small native mammals such as the Corsican giant shrew, the Sardinian pika and the Tyrrhenian vole lingered into historic times; their extinction coincided with the arrival of the black rat with Carthaginian and Roman ships and with Roman-era forest clearance.
Biguglia Lagoon and the Lavezzi Islands: Wetland and Sea at the Edges
The east coast is flatter, and south of Bastia lies the Étang de Biguglia, Corsica’s largest wetland. Formed more than 6,000 years ago as the sea reworked alluvium from the Golo River, the lagoon and its reed beds cover 1,790 hectares, including 1,450 hectares of open water averaging only 1 m deep. It was recognised in 1991 as internationally important for water birds, especially coot, pochard and tufted duck, and became a nature reserve in 1994. About 240 species of fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and insects live there, including Hermann’s tortoises, long-fingered bats, critically endangered European eels that use the lagoon as a nursery, and European pond turtles in the drainage channels. Fishermen still take almost 100 tonnes a year under a management plan that closes 20 percent of the water to fishing.
Hermann’s tortoise, the island’s best-known reptile, can be seen at A Cupulatta near Vero and in the Moltifao area. At the island’s southern tip, the granite Lavezzi Islands in the Strait of Bonifacio cover 5,123 hectares and include the southernmost point of metropolitan France. On Lavezzu, between 255 and 400 pairs of Scopoli’s shearwaters breed each year, and their success has improved since black rats were cleared from the island in 2000. Across the strait, the same species and habitats continue on Sardinia, Corsica’s Ice Age twin. For how the island fits into the country as a whole, see our guide to the geography of France, and for the dry summers and wet winters that govern its coastal maquis, our explainer on the Mediterranean climate.