Plants and Animals on Korcula Island

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Being a part of the Mediterranean region, Korcula’s vegetation is Mediterranean too. More than 60% of Korcula surface is covered by dense conifer woods (some varieties of pine and cypress) or other Mediterranean plants: holm oak, carob, bay and olives, as well as scrubs of varieties of heather and herbs: rosemary, sage, lavender, marjoram, oregano, Helichrysum italicum and many more. Korcula was densely populated by various plant few thousands of years ago when Greeks arrived here too. As Islands was so wooded, Greeks named it “Korkyra Melaina” meaning Black Korcula.

As far as animals are concerned, a variety of sea life around the island is particularly rich, due to Island’s largely unpolluted waters, including fish, various crabs, octopuses, squids, sea urchins etc.. Sharks are rarely seen but they do live in the Adriatic too.

On Korcula, there is a lot of jackals (locally called “cagalj” – pronounced “chagaly) and mongooses, as well as some wild boars, hare, pheasants, raptors, and blackbirds too. Most of them are very hard to see as they tend to stay away from people, except birds that can be seen and heard all year round, as well as crickets that like to sing during hot summer’s days.

Domestic animals include goats, chicken, pigs, cats and dogs. You can also see swallow feeding their young ones in Korcula old town.

Sometimes, one can find tortoises in the bushed too. In the winter, when there is no food for jackals, we can sometimes hear them howl in the night, particularly from the slopes of mountain Sveti Ilija, the area on Peljesac Peninsula, across the channel from Korcula. There are some snake species too, inclusive of a poisonous adder (poskok). On the island of Badija, one can see some deer too which were brought there to from deer colony.

Photos of animals and plants in Korcula