Near Magnolia, Arkansas, United States Photograph by Mike Gee   Southern North America: Southern United States Temperate Coniferous Forests   54,400 square miles (140,900 square kilometers) -- about the size of Wisconsin Critical/Endangered

· From Pines to Prickley Pears
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
More Photos

From Pines to Prickley Pears

A variety of oak, hickories, and pines, along with prickly pear cactus and hundreds of species of wildflowers, fill the Piney Woods Forests ecoregion. Little of the long-leaf pine forest that once dominated this ecoregion remains, but you can still hear the drumming of an occasional red-cockaded woodpecker-an endangered species that's dependent upon mature pine forests.

Special Features

In the spring, the sandhill pine forests of the Piney Woods are colored with a beautiful array of yaupon, flowering dogwoods, and the globally endangered Texas trailing phlox.

	Red-cockaded woodpeckers usually nest in mature, living long-leaf pine trees that are stricken by a fungus called red heart disease. This fungus softens the inner wood of the tree, which allows these woodpeckers to hammer out a nesting cavity. But even with the fungus it can take up to three years for these woodpeckers to excavate a nest hole.

Wild Side

Small ponds in the region are home to a tiny, carnivorous plant called purple bladderwort.In the drier, savanna-like areas of the region, stands of longleaf and loblolly pine mix with tupelo, sweet gum, and magnolia or oaks and hickories. Opossums, prairie kingsnakes, squirrel tree frogs, and slender glass lizards call these forests home. Red-cockaded woodpeckers depend on the cavities of mature pine trees (usually long leaf pine) for places to nest. Seminole and Rafinesque's big eared bats zip through the skies hunting insects, while eastern cottontails and gray squirrels scurry about below.

Cause for Concern

The longleaf pine forests are one of the most rapidly disappearing ecosystems in the southeastern United States. Most of the country's pinewood forests were heavily logged during the early 1900s, and many of the second-growth forests that grew back were replaced by human development or converted into commercial pine plantations. Also detrimental to the area's native species has been the human suppression of wild fires, which once played an important role in the region's ecology by maintaining open woodland habitats. Because of these threats, only three percent of the habitat in this ecoregion is considered to be intact today.

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