Algeria · Constructive Voices · Data Report

Algeria's Animal and Plant Species: what is actually there, and what can still be counted

There are 233 Saharan cypresses left in the wild and 8,561 mature Algerian firs. Knowing a species to the nearest individual is not a sign of good monitoring. It is a sign of how few are left.

Constructive Voices · By Jackie De Burca · Updated August 2026 · Reading time approx. 17 minutes

Accounts of Algerian wildlife tend to lead with large mammals. It is the wrong place to start, because Algeria has already lost most of them.

The Barbary lion went extinct here in about 1958. The Mediterranean monk seal has no resident Algerian population, only occasional sightings. The Saharan cheetah survives at some of the lowest large-carnivore densities ever recorded in Africa. Of the charismatic species, only the Barbary macaque has a population large enough to manage rather than merely mourn.

What Algeria uniquely holds is plants. 248 vascular plant taxa exist nowhere else on Earth, including the only fir species endemic to the African continent. They are also the group about which almost nothing is formally known: just 16 of those 248 have ever been assessed against IUCN criteria.

Algeria biodiversity — From the Tell Atlas to the Tassili plateau, Algeria's rarest species are overwhelmingly botanical. Image: Constructive Voices with Canva.

233Saharan cypresses remaining in the wild, all in one place

8,561Mature Algerian firs — the only fir endemic to Africa

16 of 248Endemic plant taxa ever assessed against IUCN criteria

1958Estimated year the Barbary lion went extinct in Algeria

01 · THE COUNTED ONESTwo trees, and what precise numbers mean

Most conservation figures are estimates with wide error bars. Two of Algeria's are not, and the reason is uncomfortable: the populations are small enough to count by hand.

Table 1 · Algeria's rarest trees, individually counted
Species	Where	Wild individuals	Status
Saharan cypress Cupressus dupreziana	Tassili n'Ajjer plateau, south-east Sahara	233	Threatened
Algerian fir Abies numidica	Babor and Tababort, Tell Atlas	8,561	Critically Endangered

Sources: IUCN and Botanic Gardens Conservation International records for Cupressus dupreziana, assessed as Endangered at species level with the Algerian variety Critically Endangered; field survey of Abies numidica in Babor-Tababort National Park conducted June 2020 to April 2025, published 2025, giving 8,561 mature trees across an area of occupancy of 40 km².

The cypress that reproduces without a mother

The Saharan cypress grows in one place on Earth: the Tassili n'Ajjer, hundreds of kilometres from any other forest. Annual rainfall there is around 30 millimetres. Most of the surviving trees are estimated to be over 2,000 years old, some as much as 2,400, and the largest reaches roughly 22 metres.

Isolation has produced something biologically extraordinary. The species reproduces by male apomixis: seeds develop entirely from the genetic content of the pollen, with the female parent providing nutrition but no genes. It is one of very few plants known to do this, and it is a symptom of extreme population collapse as much as a curiosity.

Regeneration in the wild is close to nil. The threats recorded at the site are not industrial — they are tourism pressure, insufficient park staffing, and the slow desiccation of the Sahara around the trees. Ex-situ propagation from harvested seed is under way through Algerian forestry research bodies.

Twenty-three centuries of survival, and the current constraint is how many rangers the park can afford.

Africa's only endemic fir

The Algerian fir is the sole Abies species endemic to the African continent, confined to steep north- and north-east-facing slopes on Djebel Babor and Tababort in Sétif province, between roughly 1,850 and 2,000 metres. It grows alongside Atlas cedar, zeen oak, yew and holly — a relict community with no equivalent anywhere else in Africa.

The 2025 survey put the mature population at 8,561 trees across 40 km² of occupancy, with a continuous distribution at Babor and a fragmented one at Tababort. Earlier assessments recorded the extent of occurrence at under 30 km² and noted that numbers at Djebel Babor had halved since the 1950s. Saplings struggle to establish through dense understorey and deep winter snow; the recorded pressures are fire, fuelwood collection and summer grazing by cattle and goats.

The site was upgraded from a nature reserve in 1985 and became Babor-Tababort National Park in 2019. For decades before that, its main protection was that it is difficult to reach in winter.

02 · THE ENDEMIC FLORA248 taxa, and how little is known about them

Algeria's flora is usually summarised as "over 4,000 plant species". A 2023 taxonomic review gives the sharper figure: 248 vascular plant taxa are strict Algerian endemics, from 41 families and 128 genera, making up about 6.3% of the total known flora — which puts the whole flora at roughly 3,900 taxa.

Table 2 · Algeria's endemic vascular flora
Measure	Finding
Strict Algerian endemic taxa	248
Families / genera represented	41 / 128
Share of total known Algerian flora	~6.3%
Range-restricted to a single floristic region	59%
Assessed against IUCN criteria	16 (6.4%)
Of those assessed, threatened	5.6%
Legally protected	44%
Within the protected area network	43%

Source: new analysis of the endemic vascular plants of Algeria, their diversity, distribution pattern and conservation status, Willdenowia 53, 2023. Richness of endemics is concentrated in the northern mountain floristic regions.

Two numbers in that table matter more than the headline. Fewer than one in fifteen of Algeria's endemic plants has ever been formally assessed for extinction risk, so the country cannot say which of its unique species are in trouble. And 59% exist in a single floristic region — most of them in the northern mountains, which are the parts of Algeria that burn, that are grazed, and that sit directly above the expanding coastal cities.

The concentration is the risk. A range-restricted endemic in one mountain range is one fire season away from a materially different situation, and there is no baseline against which to notice.

Algeria's natural heritage — Fifty-nine per cent of Algeria's endemic plants occur in a single floristic region, most of them in the northern mountains. Image: Constructive Voices via AI.

03 · THE MAMMALSWhat survives, what does not, and what never did

Popular accounts of Algerian wildlife carry a good deal of inherited error. The audit below separates the species that are present from those that are gone or were never resident.

Table 3 · Large mammal status audit
Species	Present in Algeria?	Detail
Barbary macaque Macaca sylvanus	Yes	Over 9,000 individuals; Endangered; Djurdjura, Gouraya and Chréa national parks, with new presence records in Skikda and Jijel. Shared with Morocco, not endemic.
Saharan cheetah Acinonyx jubatus hecki	Barely	Critically Endangered; fewer than 250 mature individuals across a range spanning several Saharan and Sahelian states. Densities of 0.21–0.55 per 1,000 km² in Ahaggar, among the lowest recorded in Africa.
Mediterranean monk seal Monachus monachus	No resident population	Roughly 600–1,000 survive globally in three main subpopulations — the Aegean, Madeira and Cabo Blanco. Algeria records only sporadic sightings. Historic Algerian animals belong to a mitochondrial lineage now extinct.
Barbary lion Panthera leo leo	Extinct	Statistically estimated to have gone extinct in Algeria around 1958, with a 95% confidence interval extending to 1962. Last recorded sighting 1956, north of Sétif.
African elephant	Not present	North African elephants disappeared from the region in antiquity. There is no wild elephant population anywhere in Algeria.

Sources: conservation status review of the Barbary macaque in Algeria, 2025; camera-trap density estimation for the Saharan cheetah in Ahaggar Cultural Park, PLOS ONE, 2015; IUCN and Marine Mammal Commission population figures for the Mediterranean monk seal, reassessed as Vulnerable in 2023, with mitogenomic evidence of an extinct western clade; Black et al., "Examining the Extinction of the Barbary Lion", PLOS ONE, 2013.

How the lion actually went

The Barbary lion is usually described as hunted to extinction, and it was — French colonial bounty systems recorded roughly 203 kills between 1873 and 1883 alone. But the ending was about habitat, not guns.

The last confirmed sighting was in 1956, by passengers on a bus, in forest just north of Sétif. That forest was destroyed by arson in 1958 during the war. The researchers who established the 1958 extinction date note that if confirmed, it would make the Barbary lion one of very few documented extinctions caused directly by war.

The same forests are where the Algerian fir now stands, and the same fire risk applies.

The macaque is a roads problem

The Barbary macaque is the one large mammal in Algeria with a population big enough to actively manage. The 2025 review compiling published and unpublished Algerian data estimated over 9,000 individuals and identified the main anthropogenic pressures as habitat loss, overgrazing, illegal trade, tourism — and road traffic.

Its priority recommendations are correspondingly practical: enforceable legislation on the pet trade, new protected areas in the Guerrouche and Akfadou forests, and the installation of road signs and speed bumps on routes through macaque habitat. Traffic calming is not usually filed under biodiversity policy. For Algeria's only primate it is among the most direct interventions available, and it sits with highway authorities rather than conservation ministries.

Barbary macaque in Algeria — The Barbary macaque is Algeria's only primate and its only large mammal with a manageable population. Image: Constructive Voices with Canva.

04 · WETLANDSThe part of the network that genuinely leads

Where Algeria unambiguously performs is wetlands. It has 50 Ramsar sites of international importance covering just under three million hectares, one of the largest such networks in Africa, drawn from a national inventory of more than 2,300 wetlands.

Table 4 · Algeria's wetland network
Measure	Figure	Note
Ramsar sites	50	2,991,013 ha in total
National wetland inventory	2,375	2,056 natural, 319 artificial
Chott Ech Chergui, Saïda	855,500 ha	Among the largest sites in the network
Lac de Boughezoul, Médéa	9,058 ha	Key stop-over for birds crossing the Sahara
Oum Lâagareb, El Tarf	729 ha	Floodplain peatland; ash, alder and bay laurel

Sources: Ramsar Convention site records and designation notices; Algerian Directorate-General for Forestry national wetland inventory as reported through MedWet.

The network is unusually varied. It takes in seasonal salt flats across the high plateaux, alder groves in El Kala that are otherwise almost absent from Algeria, Saharan rock pools in the Tamanrasset highlands, oases fed by the ancient fouggara underground irrigation channels, and Ghar Boumâaze, described as the largest cavern network in Africa.

It also holds genuine endemic vertebrates that rarely feature in species lists. Poiret's newt (Pleurodeles poireti), found only in north-east Algeria and assessed as Endangered, occurs in the Oum Lâagareb peatland alongside otter and European pond turtle. That site's recorded threat is excessive water pumping by the local community for irrigation.

Two things follow. Wetlands are the one area where Algeria's designations reach the populated north rather than the empty south. And they are the designations most directly exposed to abstraction, drainage and agricultural expansion, because they sit exactly where the water is wanted.

Algerian wildlife — Algeria's wetlands support trans-Saharan bird migration, including greater flamingo and European spoonbill. Image: Constructive Voices via AI.

05 · THE CEDARA forest dying faster than it is being replaced

The Atlas cedar is the clearest measure of what is happening to Algeria's mountain forests, because its decline has been tracked in tree rings for five centuries.

Table 5 · Atlas cedar, *Cedrus atlantica*
Measure	Detail
IUCN status	Endangered — assessed as Least Concern as recently as 1998
Area of occupancy	1,300–1,500 km² across Algeria and Morocco combined; Morocco holds about 80% of the total forest area
Algerian range	Aurès, Belezma, Hodna, Djebel Babor, Djurdjura, Blida, Ouarsenis
Recorded mortality	Over 95% of trees dead in some stands, including Boumerzoug in Belezma National Park
Mass mortality episodes	1880, 1980 and 2000, each attributed to drought as the trigger
Drought of 1999–2002	The driest period since 1845 in reconstructed records
Secondary driver	Bark beetle and wood-borer outbreaks in weakened stands

Sources: IUCN Red List assessment for Cedrus atlantica; Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Threatened Conifers of the World; dendrochronological reconstruction from Chelia spanning 1502–2008; published research on xylophagous insect outbreaks in the Aurès cedar forests.

The sequence is legible. Drought weakens the stand, bark beetles and wood-borers move into weakened trees, and mortality follows. Studies of Chelia and Ouled Yagoub recorded a sharp fall in cedar cover between 1999 and 2016, coinciding with the drought at the start of that period. Several researchers describe advanced dieback in many stands and warn of their disappearance within decades.

The institutional response is genuine but slow. Belezma, Djurdjura and Chréa have been UNESCO biosphere reserves since 1997, and the Directorate General of Forests has been preparing classification files for a Chelia-Ouled Yagoub National Park of around 32,000 hectares. Designation does not stop drought. It does determine whether grazing, fuelwood cutting and fire are managed in the stands that remain.

Algeria biodiversity mountain ecosystems — Atlas cedar stands in the Aurès have recorded mortality above 95% in places. Image: Constructive Voices via AI.

06 · THE DRIVERSWhat is actually doing the damage

Habitat loss, climate change, poaching and pollution are the standard four. In Algeria they carry very different weights, and the evidence is uneven between them.

Table 6 · Pressures ranked by strength of evidence
Pressure	Evidence in Algeria	Strength
Fire	Over 75,000 forest fires between 1985 and 2022, averaging about 35,000 ha a year. The 2021 Kabylie fires killed 90 to over 100 people and caused more than US$124m of damage to agriculture and housing.	Strong
Drought and heat	Tree-ring reconstruction ties cedar mass mortality to specific drought episodes; 1999–2002 was the driest period since 1845.	Strong
Overgrazing	Recorded as a direct constraint on regeneration for the Algerian fir and as a principal driver of steppe degradation across 20 million hectares.	Strong
Land conversion and roads	Agricultural and urban expansion into the northern belt; road traffic identified as a primary pressure on Barbary macaque populations.	Moderate
Water abstraction	Recorded site-level threat at Ramsar wetlands including Oum Lâagareb, where irrigation pumping is the named pressure.	Moderate
Illegal trade and hunting	Documented for the Barbary macaque as a pet-trade problem. Comprehensive national data on wildlife crime is not publicly available.	Moderate
Pollution	Frequently cited; little Algeria-specific published quantification of effects on terrestrial species.	Weak evidence

Assessment by Constructive Voices, drawing on the sources cited throughout this report. "Strength" refers to the quality and quantity of published Algeria-specific evidence, not to the presumed severity of the pressure. Weak evidence is not evidence of absence.

Fire deserves its position at the top. The World Bank's 2026 review of the Algerian forest sector is direct about causes that are administrative rather than meteorological: many forest management plans need updating, data systems are fragmented, coordination across institutions is patchy, and boundary registration remains incomplete, leaving forests exposed to encroachment and competing land uses.

That last point is the one with leverage. If the edge of the forest is not registered, the edge of the farm or the town decides where it is. The 2023 Forestry Law and the 2024 Law on Disaster Risk Management are intended to strengthen governance, and a pilot in Béjaïa — where nearly 5,300 fires burned over 144,000 hectares between 1985 and 2022 — combines cameras, drones, access roads and water systems with institutional support.

Endangered species in Algeria — Fire, drought and grazing compound one another in the northern forests. Image: Constructive Voices via AI.

07 · PROTECTIONWhat is designated, and what is measured

Algeria's protected area system is substantial on paper. The question worth asking of any such system is not how much is designated but how much is managed, and how much of it covers the places where species actually are.

Table 7 · Area-based conservation in Algeria
Measure	Figure	Note
Protected areas recorded	73	12 national designations
With management effectiveness evaluations	16	Under a quarter
OECMs recorded	5	Carry over 90% of Algeria's area-based coverage
Marine protection	~0.1%	Of territorial waters
Endemic plants inside the network	43%	44% are legally protected

Sources: UNEP-WCMC, Protected Area Profile for Algeria, World Database on Protected Areas, August 2026; global assessment of OECM contribution to Global Biodiversity Framework Target 3, Frontiers in Conservation Science, 2024; World Bank development indicators on marine protected areas, 2024; Willdenowia 53, 2023 for endemic plant coverage.

Because Algeria's five recorded OECMs include enormous Saharan cultural parks, national coverage figures are dominated by desert. That is not a criticism of the Saharan sites — Ahaggar Cultural Park is the single most important area for the Saharan cheetah, and Tassili n'Ajjer holds every wild Saharan cypress on Earth. It is a caution about reading the headline percentage as protection of the northern belt, where the endemic flora and the macaques are.

The management effectiveness figure is the more telling one. Fewer than a quarter of Algeria's protected areas have been evaluated for whether their management is working. Designation is the cheap part.

Recent additions have been well targeted. Babor-Tababort National Park, declared in 2019 across Sétif, Jijel and Béjaïa, covers the entire world population of the Algerian fir. The Cap Lindles nature reserve at Oran was declared the same year. Further parks at Taghit-Guir in Béchar and Chelia-Ouled Yagoub have been proposed.

Conservation efforts and education in Algeria — Designation is the cheap part. Fewer than a quarter of Algeria's protected areas have been evaluated for management effectiveness. Image: Constructive Voices via AI.

Conservation efforts in Algeria — Babor-Tababort National Park, declared in 2019, contains the entire world population of the Algerian fir. Image: Constructive Voices via AI.

What the evidence supports

Assess the endemic flora. Only 16 of 248 endemic taxa have IUCN assessments. Until that number rises, Algeria cannot say which of its unique species are declining, and cannot prioritise between them.
Treat the two counted trees as emergencies. 233 Saharan cypresses with near-zero regeneration and 8,561 Algerian firs in a 40 km² range are populations where individual losses matter.
Complete forest boundary registration. Identified by the World Bank as a structural cause of fire vulnerability and encroachment. It is a cadastral task, and it makes every subsequent protection decision enforceable.
Evaluate management, not just designation. Fewer than a quarter of protected areas have management effectiveness evaluations. Babor-Tababort covers a species' entire world range; whether it is working is worth knowing.
Control grazing in the relict stands. Summer cattle and goat grazing is a named constraint on Algerian fir regeneration and on steppe recovery. It is manageable at site level.
Sign and calm the roads through macaque habitat. A highway-authority decision with a direct effect on an Endangered species, alongside protection for the Guerrouche and Akfadou forests.
Protect wetlands from abstraction. The Ramsar network is Algeria's strongest designation record and sits in the populated north, where irrigation demand is highest.

08 · QUESTIONSFrequently asked

What species are unique to Algeria?

248 vascular plant taxa are found nowhere else, from 41 families and 128 genera. The best known are the Algerian fir, the only fir species endemic to Africa, and the Saharan cypress of the Tassili n'Ajjer. Poiret's newt, an Endangered amphibian, occurs only in north-east Algeria. The large mammals usually described as Algerian endemics are not: the Barbary macaque is shared with Morocco and the Saharan cheetah ranges across several Saharan and Sahelian states.

Are there still Barbary lions in Algeria?

No. Statistical analysis of historical sightings puts the extinction of the Barbary lion in Algeria at around 1958, with a confidence interval extending to 1962. The last recorded sighting was in 1956, in forest north of Sétif that was destroyed by arson in 1958 during the war.

Do Mediterranean monk seals live off the Algerian coast?

There is no resident population. Roughly 600 to 1,000 monk seals survive globally, in three main subpopulations in the Aegean, around Madeira and at Cabo Blanco. Algeria records only occasional sightings, and genetic work indicates the historic western Mediterranean lineage that included Algerian animals is now extinct. The species was reassessed as Vulnerable in 2023, an improvement on its previous Endangered listing.

How many plant species does Algeria have?

Roughly 3,900 known vascular taxa, of which 248 are endemic. The commonly quoted "over 4,000" is approximately right. The more significant figure is that only 16 of the 248 endemics have ever been assessed against IUCN criteria.

Why is the Atlas cedar dying?

Drought is the trigger and insects are the mechanism. Tree-ring records link mass mortality episodes in 1880, 1980 and 2000 to drought, with 1999–2002 the driest period since 1845. Bark beetles and wood-borers then colonise weakened trees. Mortality exceeds 95% in some stands, including in Belezma National Park. The species was listed as Least Concern in 1998 and is now Endangered.

How good is Algeria's protected area network?

Mixed. The Ramsar wetland network of 50 sites covering nearly three million hectares is among Africa's strongest. Terrestrial coverage looks large but is dominated by five very big Saharan sites recorded as OECMs, which carry over 90% of the total. Marine protection stands at roughly 0.1% of territorial waters, and fewer than a quarter of protected areas have management effectiveness evaluations.

What is the single biggest threat?

On the published evidence, fire — more than 75,000 forest fires between 1985 and 2022, averaging about 35,000 hectares a year, and increasingly intense as droughts lengthen. Drought and overgrazing are close behind and compound it. Pollution is frequently cited but has little Algeria-specific published quantification for terrestrial species.

What would help most?

Two unglamorous administrative tasks. Completing forest boundary registration, which the World Bank identifies as a structural driver of fire vulnerability and encroachment. And assessing the 232 endemic plant taxa that have never been evaluated, so that conservation effort can be directed by evidence rather than by which species happen to be famous.

Methodology and sourcing

Endemic flora figures are from the 2023 Willdenowia analysis of Algeria's endemic vascular plants. The Algerian fir population figure comes from a field survey conducted between June 2020 and April 2025 in Babor-Tababort National Park, using systematic sampling at Babor and a direct count at Tababort; earlier assessments from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh are used for historical trend and threat detail. Saharan cypress figures are from IUCN and Botanic Gardens Conservation International records; the species is assessed as Endangered at species level, with the Algerian variety Critically Endangered, and both figures are given rather than one.

Mammal status is drawn from the 2025 conservation status review of the Barbary macaque in Algeria, published camera-trap and density work on the Saharan cheetah in Ahaggar Cultural Park, IUCN and Marine Mammal Commission figures for the Mediterranean monk seal together with mitogenomic work on its lost western lineage, and the 2013 PLOS ONE probabilistic analysis of Barbary lion extinction dates. Where extinction dates are statistical estimates rather than observations, the confidence intervals are stated.

Protected area counts are from the UNEP-WCMC World Database on Protected Areas profile for Algeria, August 2026. Wetland figures are from Ramsar Convention site records and Algerian Directorate-General for Forestry reporting. Fire figures are from the World Bank's June 2026 forest sector feature, supplemented by contemporaneous reporting for individual seasons; where death tolls differ between official and independent sources, both are given.

The pressure ranking in Table 6 is Constructive Voices' own assessment and is identified as such at the point of use. It ranks the strength of published Algeria-specific evidence, not presumed severity; a pressure with weak evidence may still be significant.

A Constructive Voices country data report by Jackie De Burca. Updated August 2026.

Constructive Voices

Algeria Biodiversity: Animal and Plant Species and What is Under Threat

Join Global Experts