Wild Animals of France: Mammals, Birds and Where to See Them

France’s wildlife at a glance

Wild boar and deer of the forests

The wild boar is France’s most widespread large mammal, living in forests, scrub, marshes and farmland across the country, and its numbers have grown strongly over the past half century. Boar are mainly active at night, rooting for acorns, roots, bulbs, worms and grubs, and they live in family groups of females and young. Our wild boar profile explains their life cycle.

The roe deer is the most common deer in France, small and reddish in summer, with a white rump patch that flashes when it runs. Red deer are much larger and live mainly in big forests. Every September and October the stags roar during the rut, called le brame in French, and the walled forest park at Chambord in the Loire Valley is one of the most famous places to hear them.

Ibex, chamois and marmots in the mountains

The Alpine ibex (Capra ibex) is the emblem of the Vanoise National Park in Savoie, created in 1963 as France’s first national park. By the 19th century, hunting had reduced the whole species to fewer than 100 animals around Gran Paradiso in Italy, on the French border. Protection and reintroductions brought it back, and by the late 2010s France had roughly 9,000 ibex in about 30 colonies. Males weigh 67–117 kg (148–258 lb) and carry long, ridged, backward-curving horns.

The Alpine chamois is smaller and quicker, with short hooked horns and a dark stripe below each eye, and lives in the Alps, the Jura and the Vosges. The Pyrenees have their own species, the Pyrenean chamois, called isard in French. Alpine marmots, large ground squirrels weighing 1.9–8 kg (4.2–17.6 lb), give a loud whistle to warn their colony of eagles and foxes. They hibernate for six months or more, and those in the Pyrenees descend from marmots reintroduced from the Alps in 1948. See our guide to animals of the Alps for more mountain wildlife.

The return of the wolf

The last native French wolves were wiped out in the 1930s. In November 1992, two wolves were spotted in the Mercantour National Park, in the mountains north of Nice. They had walked in from Italy along the Ligurian Alps, and genetic tests confirmed that they belonged to the Italian wolf population, not to any release.

Since then the population has grown steadily. The French Biodiversity Office (OFB) estimated about 1,080 wolves in 2025, with a likely range of 989–1,187. Most packs still live in the Alps, but wolves have settled in the Jura, the Vosges and the Massif Central, and lone wanderers turn up in many other regions. Attacks on sheep make the wolf a heated political subject in France. Read our overview of wolves in Europe.

The Eurasian lynx in the Jura and Vosges

The Eurasian lynx had vanished from France by the early 20th century. Lynx came back by two routes: animals reintroduced in the Swiss Jura and Alps in the 1970s spread across the border, and 21 lynx were released in the Vosges between 1983 and 1993. Around 150 lynx now live in France, most of them in the Jura Mountains, where they hunt roe deer and chamois. Road collisions and illegal killing are the main threats, and the Vosges population remains fragile. Learn more in our Eurasian lynx profile.

Brown bears in the Pyrenees

Brown bears once lived in many French mountain ranges, but by the 20th century they survived only in the Pyrenees. Numbers fell to about 15 in the 1980s and only around five in the mid-1990s. Between 1996 and 1997, three bears from Slovenia were released at Melles in the central Pyrenees, followed by five more in 2006 and two females in 2018. The last female of native Pyrenean stock, Cannelle, was shot in 2004.

Thanks to these releases, the population has grown to roughly 100 bears shared between France, Spain and Andorra, most of them in the central Pyrenees of Ariège and Catalonia. The bears are shy and mostly active at dawn and dusk, and sightings are rare. Their return is still controversial among some shepherds. See brown bears in Europe for the wider picture.

Vultures and other birds of prey

France has all four of Europe’s vulture species. The griffon vulture, with a wingspan of 2.3–2.8 m (7.5–9.2 ft), had disappeared from the Massif Central when 61 birds were released in the Grands Causses between 1981 and 1986. Today hundreds of pairs nest on the limestone cliffs of the Gorges de la Jonte and the Tarn, and by 2022 France counted roughly 900 pairs in the Massif Central, 800 in the Alps and 1,200 in the Pyrenees.

Cinereous vultures were also reintroduced to the Causses, and Egyptian vultures arrive from Africa each spring. The bearded vulture, which feeds mostly on bones, survived in the Pyrenees and has been released in the Alps since 1986 through an international project. Golden eagles soar over all the high mountains.

Camargue flamingos and wetland birds

The Camargue, the vast delta of the Rhône between Arles and the Mediterranean, is one of Europe’s great bird sites, with more than 400 bird species recorded. Its salt lagoons hold one of the largest greater flamingo breeding colonies in the Mediterranean, usually more than 10,000 pairs since the early 1990s, though numbers swing widely from year to year. Flamingos are pink because of pigments in the brine shrimp and algae they filter from the shallow water.

The Camargue’s famous white horses and black bulls are domestic animals that roam semi-free in herds. Elsewhere, white storks nest on rooftops in Alsace, where conservation projects rebuilt a population that had nearly vanished in the 1970s, and tens of thousands of common cranes stop at the Lac du Der-Chantecoq in Champagne each autumn.

Coasts and seas

France shares the Pelagos Sanctuary, an 87,500 km² (33,800 sq mi) marine protected area in the Ligurian Sea, with Italy and Monaco. It was agreed in 1999 to protect whales and dolphins, and it is thought to be the main feeding ground for fin whales in the Mediterranean, the second-largest animal on Earth. Gray seals live off Brittany around the Sept-Îles and Molène archipelagos, and bottlenose dolphins live in the Iroise Sea off Finistère.

Where to see wildlife in France

• Vanoise National Park, Savoie: ibex, chamois and marmots, with bearded vultures overhead; June to October is best.
• Mercantour National Park, Alpes-Maritimes: chamois, ibex and mouflon; wolves live here but are rarely seen.
• Pyrenees National Park: isards, marmots, griffon and bearded vultures, and a slim chance of a bear.
• Gorges de la Jonte, Lozère and Aveyron: griffon and cinereous vultures at close range.
• The Camargue, Bouches-du-Rhône: flamingos all year, plus herons, egrets and bee-eaters in summer.
• Chambord, Loir-et-Cher: the red deer rut in late September and October.
• Lac du Der-Chantecoq, Marne: huge flocks of common cranes from October to March.
• Jura and Vosges: lynx country, though seeing one takes great luck.

Dawn and dusk are the best times for mammals. Keep to paths in national parks, keep dogs on a lead, and watch flamingo colonies and vulture cliffs from viewpoints without disturbing them.