Madeira Island, Portugal Photograph by Chris Szabo   Palaearctic Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests   300 square miles (800 square kilometers) -- about half the size of Rhode Island Critical/Endangered

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

The Madeira Evergreen Forests ecoregion encompasses the Madeira Islands and the nearby Savage Islands--named for the temperament of the people discovered upon European contact. In the Madeira Archipelago, an island chain in the eastern Atlantic, life abounds. Among these islands, habitats range from evergreen forests to grassland communities. Historically, there were no shortages of places for animals to find what they need. All around the islands are birds, bats, insects, and other creatures swooping, flying, and crawling through the diversity of habitats the islands offer.

Special Features

The volcanic islands are home to a variety of plant communities that cover the steep slopes and high plains of the islands. Along the coasts, herb and shrub communities thrive. The slopes of the islands are covered with dry evergreen and humid forests. Dry evergreen forests are found where rainfall is low and little fog forms. Humid forests, on the other hand, are found where rainfall is higher and sea fogs are more common. Both forests are dominated by several species of laurel trees. Heath scrub and grasslands cover some mountaintops.

	When the Madeira Islands were first colonized in the 1400s, the forests were quickly cut down and burned to make way for agricultural crops. According to some accounts, the fires burned for seven years.

Wild Side

Birds, bats, a great number of invertebrates, and a variety of sea life all make their homes in and around the Madeira Evergreen Forests ecoregion, and many are endemic to this island archipelago. Half of the ecoregion’s 65 species of millipedes are endemic to the islands, as are most of the 219 land mollusks. The islands are also home to the threatened Mediterranean monk seal as well as the endemic dark-tailed laurel pigeon.

Cause for Concern

As on many isolated islands, introduced species threaten the native plants and animals of the Madeira Evergreen Forests. The habitats of the ecoregion are threatened by a variety of human activities, from clearing land for agriculture to urban development. Today, only scattered fragments remain of the once common dry evergreen forests.

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