Kane, Pennsylvania, USA Photograph by Collins Pine Company   Eastern North America: Northeastern United States Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests   32,400 square miles (83,900 square kilometers) -- slightly larger than Maine Critical/Endangered

· Northeast Biodiversity
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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Northeast Biodiversity

Many people in the northeast United States are familiar with the natural beauty of the Allegheny Highlands Forests. This ecoregion includes such popular vacation sites as the Finger Lakes, the Poconos, and French Creek, a pristine river valley in southwest New York and northwest Pennsylvania that harbors a diversity of plants and animals.

Special Features

Between 1890 and 1920, loggers cleared most of the Allegheny Plateau. A few pockets of old growth hemlock and beech forests were spared, but the new forests that replaced most of the ecoregion were very different. The heavy cutting favored hardwoods such as oaks, and created massive amounts of coniferous debris, providing ideal conditions for widespread and intense fires. The fires virtual eliminationed the white pine and hemlock. Repeated fires also reduced the proportion of beech and sugar maple, while increasing the numbers of aspen, pin cherry, sedges, grasses, and honeysuckles.

	Although less than one percent of the original forest here remains, some trees are more than 300 years old.

Wild Side

Stands of old growth hemlock provide secluded mountainous habitat for bobcats, black bears, and coyotes. Flying squirrels glide from tree to tree, watched by barred owls in their roosts high on tree branches.

Cause for Concern

Less than one percent of this ecoregion still contains the forest that was here before European settlers arrived. Much of the Allegheny Highland Forests was cut down to clear land for agriculture. Other threats in the northern parts of this ecoregion now include habitat loss for development. And in the western part of the region, a booming deer population is currently destroying herbaceous vegetation and preventing trees from regenerating.

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