nature 
An integral and varied nature joins with the changes and the multishapes of the territory.
In the highest mounts there are woods of holm-oaks and junipers, majestic and solitary yew-trees , near which they secretly bivouac the mouflons (photo, M.Vacca) and the wild boars. Many are the botanists endemisms.
From there, slipping towards the sea, the Mediterranean spot becames intenser and from the valley zones, where they abound the oleanders and the alders, they fly back the Eagle and the goshawk, the kestrel and the sparrow-hawk. Perhaps there is still some specimen of nun seal, who finds shelter in navy gorges.
Moreover, they are extraordinary the millenarians wild olive-trees of S. Maria Navarrese. 
The meadows and the woody bands of the ogliastrino side of the Gennargentu are covered with old specimen of yew and oak-trees, with blooming peony (photo: M.Vacca), wild rose and gentian. There fly the royal eagles, the goshawks and the sparrow-hawks, the buzzards, the pilgrim hawks and the jays; there find shelter the mouflons and the wild boars, the martens and the foxes, the dormice and the weasels.
In the area of the ” heels ” the vegetation is rich in heather, lentisk and terebinth, in yew-trees, hollies and thymus. The mouflons, the foxes, the wild boars and cats live here.
history
The numerous testimonies of the antiquity (Nuraghi, Tombs of the Giants, holy Sources, Domus de Janas and Menhir) give clear indications about the presence of the man since the prehistory.
It is probable that the Punics and the Phoenicians are landed in the ogliastrine coasts: if the high rocky coasts of the gulf of Orosei did not offer them some safe points of berthing, they were righter the coasts of Tertenia and Tortolì, in whose outskirtses they would have been later the Roman takeovers.
In the judical period the Ogliastra was part first of the sentence of Cagliari and than of that one of Gallura. It is probable that it existed in origin, a sentence of Ogliastra that extended for all the oriental coast, with Orosei like chieftown.
Subsequently, first under Spanish rule and then under the Aragonese one, Ogliastra was part of the marquisate of Quirra.
At the beginning of the 800 it became province, with Lanusei like chieftown. The Ogliastra is moreover a diocese: daughter of that one of Suelli; it was founded in the XI century and then re-united to Cagliari, rebuilt at Tortolì in the first half of the 800 and finally transferred at Lanusei in 1927.
the man and the territory
In Ogliastra the environmental system has strongly conditioned the regional planning, the localization and the distribution of the appropriations, the ways of communication, the activities and the ways of life.
The man has installed himself with care, creating a tight and harmonious relation with the territory and emphasizing it without destroying the still existing natural resources, whether in the inhabited centers or in the shapes of scattered takeover.
the rooms
In spite of many peculiarities of every inhabited center, there are some common characteristics between the mountain countries and others between those of the coastal and level zone.
In the inner and situated to a greater altitude countries, the rooms are high, with a ground floor, one or more floor and an attic:these are all rooms used in a different way, domestic or working uses.
In the hilly zone prevails the room with two spaces overlapping and connected by an external staircase.
In the plain it is present a similar dwelling, but with the inner staircase and an opened gallery that gives on a courtyard, in the way of the ” campidanesi” houses.
The most used building materials, of which it conserves trace in the better conserved urban parts, in some ” biginaus ” (environs), they were the stone, the mud used like glue (sometimes with the straw), the interlaced reeds and the clay tiles used like cover.
The inhabited centers, whose building system is thicker in the 
higher zones and with wider meshes in the plain, they open often themselves to the country including small plots of ground used as garden. The same fields are studded from small and rustic villas (today also various farm holidays) and it is not rare to find some rural church.
It is possible to find holly places also in the mountain area, where the territory is studded from ” pinnetas ” of the shepherds: buildings in gray-white stone, walled dry up with juniper logs and coppers ,much more very rarely with branches.