Near Los Mochis, Mexico Photograph by David Olson   Northwestern Mexico Tropical and Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests   19,700 square miles (51,000 square kilometers) -- about twice the size of Maryland Critical/Endangered

· A habitat in transition
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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A habitat in transition

This ecoregion, as its name suggests, forms a transition between the Sonoran Desert and the Sinaloan Dry Forests. In the northern portions of the ecoregion, many desert elements are present and tress are sparse. Her one might see Gila monsters and Pachycereus cactus scattered among mesquite bushes. Moving south the area becomes more charactreistic of a dry forest, and it is not uncommon to see military macaws roosting near the fragrant pink blossoms of the amapa prieta tree.

Special Features

Not only is this a transition zone between habitat types, but this ecoregion marks the transition in biomes between the Nearctic (of North America) and the Neotropical (pf Central and South America). Because of this, tropical trees range farther north here than in eastern Mexico because it does not get so many cold fronts in winter. There exists an amazing landscape of steep cliffs, deep canyons, broad valleys, and broad rivers which flow through dry deserts (Rio Mayo and Rio Yaqui). Characteristic species include Sonoran spiny-tailed iguana and Sinaloa crow.

	The end of May is the spectacular but brief blooming of Willardia mexican (neso) with rose and purple flowers followed by Guayacan (Guaiacum coulteri) with bright blue flowers.

Wild Side

Soup bowl oaks, with cupped leaves like a small bowl, live among blue oaks and arizona oaks. Mexican wolves once hunted deer in tropical hackberries thickets, with wicked thorns, along rivers lined with sycamores and pochote trees, which have pods filled with cotton material that fall to the ground like snowflakes. Other plants include pachycereus cactus which has many fluted pipes rising out of sturdy trunk, lined with bristly fruit. Here one can octupus agaves with 2 meter tall candles of golden yellow flowers. Mexican leaf frog, with white underbelly and black eyes with gold specking, live among the shade of a riverbank. In the dry season, the flowering plants are incredible with trees covered in pinks, yellows, and white flowers, and animal pollinators are abundant with lots of bees, butterflies, birds, bats, and moths. Other animals include coati (like racoon, desert tortoise, coyotes, trogons, leaf cutter ants, and ocelots.

Cause for Concern

Cutting of trees for firewood, cutting of riparian forests such as cypress, logging, overgrazing, fires, overhunting, and taking of young parrots for trade.

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