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EUROPE’S 1 × 50 min. Executive producers: Sabine Holzer, Walter Köhler

4K, 5.1 and Stereo NATURE obody who has witnessed the breath-taking beauty of the stars resources the offers: the desert on a clear night in the desert will flower Moricandia foetida only grows in a ever forget the experience. For few select places, and Bonelli’s eagles and Nmany, are the very embodiment of scops owls are among the region’s notable vastness, silence and loneliness. However, predators. Meanwhile, wild cats and foxes deserts are anything but tranquil: constant roam the semi-desert in drought, regular sandstorms, searing heat northern . Little apart from saltwort in the daytime and icy temperatures at grows on 400 square kilometres of sparse night combine to create a secretive world soil, and great bustards frequently fall prey that is both harsh and beautiful. to eagles and vultures.

The word ‘desert’ causes most people The desert environment of Fuerteventura, to think of the or the Gobi: vast the second largest of the Canary Islands, is sand dunes that cover large areas of home to few animal species. Some types countries and continents. Alternatively, of quail, coursers and houbara bustards inhospitable stony deserts like Death Valley have adapted to life in the difficult island or Australia’s outback might come to environment, while rare Canarian Egyptian mind — but the world’s deserts are not vultures circle above. limited to Africa, Asia, America and Australia. Europe’s deserts are remarkable, The Highlands of are an extensive not because of their dimensions, but stony volcanic plateau interrupted by because of their unusual history, charac- shimmering green oases of grass. At first teristics or geographic locations in Spain, glance, the area seems completely unin- Italy, in the or on the habited, and heavy rainfalls, sandstorms volcanic island of Fuerteventura. There are and blizzards can occur anytime during the tiny deserts in Sweden and Norway, and year. However, the here is large ones in Poland, Serbia and Ukraine. a result of human animal farming, rather They all continue to expand, and their than drought. The Highlands of Iceland are growth is being exacerbated by climate now the hunting grounds of foxes, change. the island’s original inhabitants.

Spain’s Desert is often compared The history and the stories of Europe’s to the Badlands of North America, and deserts are just as varied and fascinating temperatures here can rise to above as those of their larger ‘relatives’ on other 45 degrees Celsius during the summer. It continents. Europe’s deserts have much to is an inhospitable, sparse world created reveal about the development of our conti- and about its beauty, diversity, its by centuries of low precipitation, extreme nent — heat and strong wind erosion. The animals constant evolution and its uncertain future. and plants that live here are specialists that have learned to survive despite the meagre

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