Selva de Irati

The Irati forest is a deciduous forest shared between northern Navarre and the Pyrénées-Atlantiques in France. With 17,179 hectares, it is the second-largest beech-fir forest in Europe, after the Black Forest. On the Spanish side it occupies the valley of the river Irati, between the Orzanzurieta and Roncesvalles mountains to the west and Mount Orhi to the east.

It is entirely a Special Protection Area for Birds and has three reserves: Lizardoia (64 ha, 20 of them untouched), Mendilatz (119 ha, on limestone) and Tristuibartea or Ariztibarrena (55 ha). Common beech and silver fir predominate, and red deer, roe deer, wild boar and the Pyrenean brook newt, an endemic, live here.

It was heavily deforested in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the Irabia reservoir was completed in 1922. You get there via Orbaizeta, in the west, or Ochagavía, in the east.

Source of the information: Selva de Irati (Wikipedia)