Azores Azores The Azores ( or ; , ), officially the Autonomous Region of the Azores (""), is one of the two autonomous regions of Portugal (along with Madeira ("Região Autónoma da Madeira"). It is an archipelago composed of nine volcanic islands in the North Atlantic Ocean about west of continental Portugal, about west of Lisbon, in continental Portugal, about northwest of Morocco, and about southeast of Newfoundland, Canada. Its main industries are agriculture, dairy farming, livestock, fishing, and tourism, which is becoming the major service activity in the region. In addition, the government of the Azores employs a large percentage
Protected areas of the Azores today constitute the nucleus of the Island Nature Parks on each island. It was followed by Regional Legislative Decree 21/93/A (23 December 1993), which applied to the Azores the same jurisdictional regime established in national Decree 19/93 (23 January 1993), the "Rede Nacional de Áreas Protegidas" ("National Network of Protected Areas"). More than an adaption of the national regulations, it created the institutional structure that would give rise to Azorean protected areas, resulting in a reclassification of existing areas. Unfortunately, there were problems with the scheme, since the codification was not literally adaptable to the insular nature of the archipelago