South of Artic Village, Alaska, USA Photograph by Bill Eichbaum   Northwestern North America: Western United States (Alaska) into western Canada Boreal Forests/Taiga   171,200 square miles (443,300 square kilometers) -- about the size of California, Maryland, and Hawaii combined Relatively Stable/Intact

· Surrounded by Mountains and Sea
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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Surrounded by Mountains and Sea

If you could rise above this ecoregion's spruce and hardwood forests and look north, you'd see the majestic peaks of the Brooks Range. To the south is the Alaska Range, and the Richardson Mountains are to the east. This amazing ecoregion stretches west as far as the Bering Sea. Along rivers, you'll find willow, alder, balsam poplar, and quaking aspen. The Yukon Flats area in the northeastern corner of the ecoregion has been called the most productive Arctic wildlife habitat in North America. It is home to birds such as lesser scaups, pintails, scoters, sandhill cranes, and widgeons. The sight that would really catch your attention is the annual migration of caribou herds. The Porcupine, Central Arctic, and Western Arctic caribou herds migrate into this ecoregion to spend the winter.

Special Features

If you tried to dig down into the soil here, you wouldn't get very far. Underlying this ecoregion is permafrost-- a permanently frozen layer of soil several inches below the surface. Bogs are found in some of the valleys, and they support plants and animals that can live in extremely wet conditions. Willow, dwarf birch, Labrador tea, bush cinquefoil, and sedges are just some of the plants adapted to this soggy habitat.

Ptarmigans are well-suited to life in this ecoregion. During the summer their feathers are mottled brown, matching the color of the tundra. But as winter approaches, white feathers begin to replace the brown ones. By the time snow covers the ground, the birds are once again a perfect match. Even their legs and feet are covered with white feathers, which not only protect them from the cold but also act as snowshoes for walking on soft snow.

Wild Side

The forests of this ecoregion are dominated by white spruce and black spruce. Scrubby areas support plants such as willow, alder, and dwarf birch. These habitats provide homes for some amazing wildlife. Birds are plentiful, including grebes, loons, goldeneyes, grouse, flycatchers, ospreys, bald eagles, golden eagles, and ptarmigan. Mammals are also abundant, including beavers, moose, snowshoe hares, minks, river otters, martens, muskrats, grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, red foxes, and lynx. And the ecoregion is an important home for chinook salmon, which spawn in the Porcupine River and its tributaries.

Cause for Concern

The ecoregion is almost entirely intact. Habitat loss has been mostly around human communities, particularly Fairbanks, and in the Tanama Valley State Forest, where there has been clearcutting. Several other threats include subsistence and recreational hunting and fishing, mining, and agriculture. Expansion of timber harvesting and oil and gas development pose future threats. Regularly occurring fires are important to this ecoregion, and if these fires are to continue, large blocks of habitat must be preserved. Scientists believe global warming is shifting the distribution of many species.

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