Pushkar, Rajastan, India Photograph by Boschidar Ganev   Southern Asia: Eastern India and western Pakistan Deserts and Xeric Shrublands   188,500 square miles (488,300 square kilometers) -- about the size of Montana and Louisiana combined Critical/Endangered

· Very Everything
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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Very Everything

Very dry, very hot, very cold, very degraded -- that’s the Northwestern Thorn Scrub Forests ecoregion, which not too long ago was a very different kind of habitat: a dry deciduous forest.

Special Features

This ecoregion stretches across the border between India and Pakistan, in terrain that ranges from flat lowlands to low hills. The once-dominant dry deciduous forest remains only in one small area. Acacia trees now dominate the landscape. They are adapted to live where little rain falls -- and in this area, less than 30 inches (750 mm) of rain falls annually. Some parts of the region are even drier. More than 60 protected areas exist here, but they are small and amount to only slightly more than two percent of the ecoregion.

	The late Indira Gandhi, a former Prime Minister of India, introduced conservation policies that have helped conserve wildlife throughout India. She also inspired similar programs in neighboring countries.

Wild Side

Even in this degraded ecoregion, two species of large predatory cats find plenty to eat. Leopards feed on hoofed mammals such as chinkaras, chousinghas, and blackbucks, while caracals, or desert lynxes, hunt small animals such as rodents, birds, and reptiles. Caracals will occasionally kill larger mammals such as chousinghas or blackbucks. Blackbucks are revered by the local people, who have protected this species and its habitat over the years. This protection has benefited other wildlife, such as leopards and caracals. More than 400 species of birds also live in this ecoregion, one of the greatest diversities of bird life in India and Pakistan. The bird species include two birds that live almost nowhere else: white-winged tits and rufous-vented prinias. Two other threatened birds live here, too: great Indian bustards and lesser floricans.

Cause for Concern

The many protected areas in this ecoregion are small and scattered. Now they face pressures from people who need more land for livestock or who want to cut down more trees for fuel. In addition, marble mines cause habitat destruction in the region’s hills.

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