A remote Kattegat island and its surrounding sea, designated for dunes, heath, and seal habitat.
Anholt and the Sea North of Anholt (Natura 2000 area 46)
Anholt and the Sea North of Anholt is a Danish Natura 2000 protected site that covers most of Anholt island and a substantial marine area to its north, lying roughly in the middle of the Kattegat about 40 kilometers from the Jutland coast. The island is renowned for Ørkenen, a large dune landscape that makes up the vast majority of the land area and gives the island a desert-like interior that is otherwise unusual in Denmark.
The site is recognized under several international frameworks: it is both a designated EU Habitat Area and a Bird Protection Area, and the land portion also carries Ramsar wetland status. Beyond the dunes, the protected area encompasses heaths, juniper and forest dunes, dune slacks, a coastal lagoon, sandbanks, and small areas of bog and freshwater habitats, while the surrounding sea provides habitat for harbor seals and gray seals that breed along the eastern tip at Totten.
Anholt's protected status rests on an unusual combination of extensive active dune systems, a large heathland complex, and a productive marine environment supporting breeding seals and wintering seabirds. It represents one of the most distinctive island and sea landscapes in the Danish part of the Kattegat, where land and marine protection are managed as a single ecological unit.
