Since species from the Arctic, eastern Siberia, and more southerly areas all occur together on the Varanger Peninsula, the plant life is distinctive.

Lime-rich bedrock and soil in the north supports rich pockets containing rare species like Papaver dahlianum (a poppy), field fleawort, Svalbard snow cinquefoil [check spelling], and Arenaria pseudofrigida (a sandwort).

The peninsula still has a complete alpine ecosystem with reindeer (domesticated), wolverine, and Arctic fox.

An area of about 200,000 hectares (770 sq mi) of the peninsula, largely coinciding with the national park, has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports breeding populations of many birds, including lesser white-fronted geese, long-tailed ducks, common scoters, greater scaups, Eurasian golden plovers, bar-tailed godwits, ruddy turnstones, Temminck's stints, dunlins, purple sandpipers, little stints, red-necked phalaropes, spotted redshanks, long-tailed jaegers, Arctic jaegers, pomarine jaegers, short-eared owls, snowy owls, rough-legged buzzards, gyrfalcons, red-throated pipits, lapland longspurs and snow buntings.

The first element is verja which is the plural genitive case of the word which means "fishing village".