Sierra de las Nieves Natural Park

The Sierra de las Nieves Natural Park is a natural park in the Sierra de las Nieves range, Andalusia, southern Spain. It is located behind Marbella and to the east of the road to Ronda from the Costa del Sol.DescriptionThe park centres on La Torrecilla (1,919 m), the highest point of the range, and covers an area of 300 km². This mountainous area has a rich variety of flora and fauna. Historically there has been little human influence or agricultural activity in the mountains, which can be snow-covered in the winter, hence their name in Spanish.The Sierra de las Nieves area was studied in the 19th century by Swiss botanist Pierre Edmond Boissier and in 1933 by Luis Ceballos.In 1970 a delimited area of the Sierra de las Nieves Range was declared a National Hunting Reserve. In 1989 it was declared a Natural Park covering an area of 202 km². In 1995 it was declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO and in 1999 the park area was expanded to 300 km².CavesThere are a considerable number of large caves in the park, several taking the traditional form of horizontal caverns. Three are of particular interest, namely: