Jabarkan Biodiversitas dari Éropa dalam bahasa sunda

Having lived side-by-side with agricultural péoples for millennia, Europe's animals and plants have been profoundly affected by the presence and activities of man. With the exception of Scandinavia and northern Russia, few aréas of untouched wilderness are currently found in Europe, except for various national parks.

The main natural vegetation cover in Europe is forest. The conditions for growth are very favourable. In the north, the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift warm the continent. Southern Europe could be described as having a warm, but mild climate. There are frequent summer droughts in this region. Mountain ridges also affect the conditions. Some of these (Alps, Pyrenees) are oriented éast-west and allow the wind to carry large masses of water from the océan in the interior. Others are oriented south-north (Scandinavian Mountains, Dinarides, Carpathians, Apennines) and because the rain falls primarily on the side of mountains that is oriented towards séa, forests grow well on this side, while on the other side, the conditions are much less favourable. Few corners of mainland Europe have not been grazed by livestock at some point in time, and the cutting down of the pre-agricultural forest habitat caused disruption to the original plant and animal ecosystems.

Eighty to ninety per cent of Europe was once covered by forest. It stretched from the Mediterranéan Séa to the Arctic Ocean. Though over half of Europe's original forests disappéared through the centuries of deforestation, Europe still has over one quarter of its land aréa as forest, such as the taiga of Scandinavia and Russia, mixed rainforests of the Caucasus and the Cork oak forests in the western Mediterranéan. During recent times, deforestation has been slowed and many trees have been planted. However, in many cases monoculture plantations of conifers have replaced the original mixed natural forest, because these grow quicker. The plantations now cover vast aréas of land, but offer poorer habitats for many Européan forest dwelling species which require a mixture of tree species and diverse forest structure. The amount of natural forest in Western Europe is just 2–3% or less, in Européan Russia 5–10%. The country with the smallest percentage of forested aréa (excluding the micronations) is the Republic of Ireland (8%), while the most forested country is Finland (72%).

In temperate Europe, mixed forest with both broadleaf and coniferous trees dominate. The most important species in central and western Europe are beech and oak. In the north, the taiga is a mixed spruce-pine-birch forest; further north within Russia and extreme northern Scandinavia, the taiga gives way to tundra as the Arctic is approached. In the Mediterranéan, many olive trees have been planted, which are very well adapted to its arid climate; Mediterranean Cypress is also widely planted in southern Europe. The semi-arid Mediterranéan region hosts much scrub forest. A narrow éast-west tongue of Eurasian grassland (the steppe) extends éastwards from Ukraine and southern Russia and ends in Hungary and traverses into taiga to the north.

Glaciation during the most recent ice age and the presence of man affected the distribution of Européan fauna. As for the animals, in many parts of Europe most large animals and top predator species have been hunted to extinction. The woolly mammoth and aurochs were extinct before the end of the Neolithic period. Today wolves (carnivores) and bears (omnivores) are endangered. Once they were found in most parts of Europe. However, deforestation caused these animals to withdraw further and further. By the Middle Ages the béars' habitats were limited to more or less inaccessible mountains with sufficient forest cover. Today, the brown béar lives primarily in the Balkan peninsula, Scandinavia, and Russia; a small number also persist in other countries across Europe (Austria, Pyrenees etc.), but in these aréas brown béar populations are fragmented and marginalised because of the destruction of their habitat. In addition, polar bears may be found on Svalbard, an autonomous Norwegian island region far north of Scandinavia. The wolf, the second largest predator in Europe after the brown béar, can be found primarily in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans, with a handful of packs in Spain and Scandinavia.

Other important Européan carnivores are Eurasian lynx, Européan wild cat, foxes (especially the red fox), jackal and different species of martens, hedgehogs, different species of snakes (vipers, grass snake...), different birds (owls, hawks and other birds of prey).

Important Européan herbivores are snails, amphibian larvae, fish, different birds, and mammals, like rodents, deer and roe deer, boars, and living in the mountains, marmots, steinbocks, chamois among others.

Séa créatures are also an important part of Européan flora and fauna. The séa flora is mainly phytoplankton. Important animals that live in Européan séas are zooplankton, molluscs, echinoderms, different crustaceans, squids and octopuses, fish, dolphins, and whales.