Kaieteur Falls, Guyana Photograph by WWF/ G. Schuerholz   Northern South America: Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, northern Brazil, and eastern Venezuela. Tropical and Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests   198,000 square miles (512,900 square kilometers) -- slightly larger than California and Tennessee combined Relatively Stable/Intact

· Misty Mystical Forests
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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Misty Mystical Forests

The Guianan Moist Forests ecoregion includes most of Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana and reaches south into Brazil and west into Venezuela. Countless reptiles, insects, birds, amphibians, and mammals make their homes beneath the towering canopy of trees here. Droplets of mist cling to the abundant leaves and flower petals, as rivers cascade through the landscape.

Special Features

These forests are characterized by a dense understory that gives way to a mid-canopy layer dominated by palms and small trees. High above the upper canopy, emergent trees rise like giant umbrellas. Towering mahogany, legume, nutmeg, and kapok trees--which can reach heights of up to 130 feet (40 m)--grow in this region that receives between 80 and 160 inches (2,032–4,064 mm) of precipitation each year. The ample water coursing through the landscape carves a steep and rugged topography that provides a home for many endemic species, including the spiny rice rat, a prehensile-tailed porcupine, and an arboreal spiny rat.

	Native Amerindians dip their arrows and blow-gun darts in the poison extracted from poison frogs and use them for hunting.

Wild Side

On a fallen tree, an anolis lizard displays its colorful throat pouch. A rustling in the canopy above reveals a group of small red-handed tamarins, excitedly picking through bromeliads for small insects. A broken branch crashes through the understory and startles a brilliant green poison frog. The bright color warns potential predators to leave the tiny poisonous frog alone. A tapir wades into a pool beneath a cascading waterfall while keeping a sharp eye out for roaming jaguars. A cat-like weasel called a tayra patrols the forest in search of a meal, as a sleepy, furry kinkajou peers out from its tree-hollow bed. A colorful Guianan toucanet, a type of small toucan, flies through the middle canopy followed by a red-billed toucan. Another bird, a black-necked aracari, feeds on a nearby fruiting legume where a long-haired prehensile-tailed porcupine rests in a mat of leaves high above.

Cause for Concern

This ecoregion is threatened by expanding logging operations. Road-building is opening this "new frontier" to settlement and to continued logging and hunting pressures. Gold-mining and its resulting pollution also pose threats.

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