Huambo province, Angola Photograph by Brian Huntley   Afrotropics Montane Grasslands and Shrublands   28,700 square miles (74,400 square kilometers) -- about the size of West Virginia and Connecticut combined Vulnerable

· Cloudy Mystery
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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Cloudy Mystery

Rising as a steep escarpment from sea level to 3,300 feet (1,000 m) along the western edge of Angola’s high plateau, this ecoregion is continuously swathed in clouds. But it’s not the clouds that obscure our knowledge of this region; it’s civil war. Since the 1970s, this area has been too hazardous for scientists to enter.

Special Features

Many habitat types are present in this large, diverse, and virtually unexplored ecoregion, including rain forest, grassland, mangrove forest, cloud forest, and swamp. In the most northern area of the ecoregion, tall grasslands are mixed with gallery forests. The grasses here grow 6-13 feet (2-4 m) high. The trees of the gallery forests reach heights of 65-130 feet (20-40 m) and include species such as abang trees and tarahuilca, or dabema, trees. These forests have long been isolated from other wet forests in Africa, allowing many endemic or near-endemic species to evolve. Beecroft’s flying squirrels and giant forest squirrels live in these unique forest habitats. If you are traveling up in elevation you’ll eventually reach the upper slopes of the escarpment, where cloud or mist forests have canopy trees reaching 98 feet (30 m), many of which are figs and other fruiting varieties. The ecoregion also slopes down to the sea, where mangrove forests and a mosaic of closed woodlands, grasslands, and palm savannas grow.

	When surrounding areas experience droughts, many animals survive by migrating to the steep slopes, where mists provide moisture.

Wild Side

Trumpeting sounds blare through the woodland--a forest elephant is letting its presence be known. Two Beecroft’s flying squirrels chase each other as dusk settles on the forest, and giant squirrels scamper by. Golden pottos, which are slow-moving primates, crawl from tree to tree in search of their dinners. Seven bird species occur only here, including the orange-bearded bush-shrike, the Gabela helmet-shrike, the Gabela akalat, and the Pulitzer’s longbill. In the misty forests of the escarpment, trees are draped with vines and epiphytes and colorful fruits hang from their limbs. Wild coffee species form the understory, where red buffalo forage. Elsewhere in this diverse ecoregion, talapoin monkeys roam the mangrove forests near the shore and roan antelopes, reedbucks, elands, woolly-necked storks, and elephants inhabit the nearby grasslands.

Cause for Concern

Agriculture, hunting, and timber harvesting are severe threats to this ecoregion. Most of the large mammals have already been hunted out completely. Before the Angolan civil war, much of the understory was cleared and replaced with coffee plantations. During the war, however, many coffee plantations were abandoned, enabling the forests to grow back. Until the civil war ends, the fate of this ecoregion can’t be known.

For more information on this ecoregion, go to the World Wildlife Fund Scientific Report.