Highlands near Alagoas, Brazil Photograph by WWF/ D. Martins Teixiera   Neotropical Tropical and Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests   1,900 square miles (4,800 square kilometers) -- slightly smaller than Delaware Critical/Endangered

· Forest Islands
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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Forest Islands

Most of us think of islands as patches of land surrounded by water. But in northeastern Brazil, you can find something akin to islands in the Caatinga Enclaves Moist Forests. These patches of moist forest are surrounded by a "sea" of arid scrub forest and savanna. Called brejos by local people, the forests are found mostly in four major island formations, known as enclaves. So distinct are these enclaves that some species of plants, amphibians, and birds live only in one of the patches and nowhere else on Earth!

Special Features

The Caatinga Enclaves Moist Forests cover windward slopes and plateaus between 2,000 and 2,600 feet (600-800 m) above sea level. The main type of vegetation is the Atlantic semi-deciduous forest, which contains four distinct layers of vegetation, with trees reaching over 98 feet (30 m) in height. The climate is tropical with an annual rainfall between 40 and 120 inches (1,000-3,000 mm) and a dry period between July and December.

	Tillandsia bromeliads are epiphytic plants whose thick leathery leaves spiral from a central area, forming a cup that can collect and retain water. If too many grow on one tree branch, they will add so much weight that the branch will break off following heavy rains.

Wild Side

Lift up a leaf on the forest floor of Serra do Baturité, one of the four forest enclaves, and you might see a Baturité forest frog hiding there to keep moist and safe. Its closest relative, a Maranguape forest frog, is found several miles or kilometers away in a different enclave, Serra de Maranguape--and neither of these frogs is found anywhere else. Look up, and you might see a pair of black and red helmeted manakins chasing each other through the low branches of an acacia tree in a display of territoriality. Look higher still, and you might see Tillandsia bromeliads, relatives of the pineapple, covering the upper branches of the acacia tree. Along the forest edge, where sparse trees blend with caatinga scrub, a maned wolf leads two small cubs out from the protection of an eroded stream bank. Hopping up the trunk of a thick-barked tree, a moustached woodcreeper searches for beetles and spiders. An endemic buff-breasted tody-tyrant, a type of bird, sits in a tangle of vines picking insects out of the air as they fly by. A weasellike mammal called a tayra rests in the canopy above, its silky black and brown coat shining in the evening sunlight.

Cause for Concern

Because these forest enclaves are more fertile than the surrounding caatinga scrub, humans prefer to live in them. As a result, more than 90 percent of the original forest cover has been lost to subsistence and large-scale agriculture, logging operations, and urban development. Hunting and fuel-wood harvesting also threaten the region's diversity.

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