Hillsboro, West Virginia, USA Photograph by Michael Condon   Eastern North America: Eastern United States Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests   74,200 square miles (192,200 square kilometers) -- about the size of South Dakota Critical/Endangered

· Relicts of Ancient Forests
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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Relicts of Ancient Forests

The Appalachian Mixed Mesophytic Forests give us a rare glimpse of what life was like in the ancient forests that once covered much of the Northern Hemisphere. Today, examples of these forests can be found only in eastern North America and in eastern and central China. These relicts of ancient forests are joined with a huge variety of other interesting habitat types -- glades, heath barrens, shale barrens, sphagnum bogs, and even cranberry bogs -- to make up one of the most biologically diverse temperate regions of the world.

Special Features

The diverse array of habitats in this forest makes this a prime stopover point for migrating neotropical songbirds such as wood warblers, vireos, and thrushes.

	The migrating Neotropical songbirds breed in these mountains in the summer. If we lose these forests and breeding sites, people all over Latin American may no longer see these beautiful birds.

Wild Side

These moist broadleaf forests contain an abundance of endemic species. In one small area you may find more than 30 different tree species and many more species of ferns and fungi. From snails and salamanders to birds and beetles, the animal life is abundant and diverse. The freshwater ecosystems in this ecoregion host a high number of endemic mussels, fish, and crayfish. Oaks and hickories thrive at lower elevations, while sugar maples, eastern hemlock, and mountain laurel flourish higher in the mountains.

Cause for Concern

More than 95 percent of this ecoregion has been heavily degraded over the past 200 years. Only a few fragments of old-growth forest remain, most of which are only a few acres in size. The existing forest occurs in a mosaic, broken by agriculture, roads, power lines, towns, and other forms of development. Even many of the national forests within this ecoregion are under heavy logging pressure, which is usually accompanied by road building and the use of pesticides and herbicides.

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