Lough Gill, Sligo County, Ireland Photograph by Yasuharu Esaki   Western Europe: Northern and eastern United Kingdom (Scotland and Northern Ireland) and Ireland Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests   14,900 square miles (38,700 square kilometers) -- about twice the size of New Jersey Vulnerable

· Truly Bogged Down
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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Truly Bogged Down

The interiors of the islands that make up this ecoregion are dominated by blanket bogs in which peat, rather than soil, predominates. Peat supports many interesting species, and lies directly on top of the bedrock, so where there is no peat, the bare rock is exposed. Close to the Atlantic Ocean, sand dune grassland communities unique to Europe can be found.

Special Features

This ecoregion lies at the northern and western edges of the islands of Ireland and Great Britain and encompasses a few other offshore islands, including the Shetland Isles. The ecoregion benefits from abundant moisture and steady temperatures thanks to the influence of the Atlantic Ocean. Two habitat types dominate. The first is machair, a species-rich, rolling dune grassland found along the coastlines. Traditional land use practices such as grazing, haymaking, and limited cultivation sustain the machair and its characteristic species by preventing succession to woodland. The second habitat type is blanket bogs, inland wetlands occurring on flat areas and small hills where moisture is abundant and average temperatures are low. Peat is a natural part of these bogs, and it accumulates to depths of 3 to 16 feet (1 to 5 m) thick. It is formed from compacted dead plants such as sweet gale and cloudberry shrubs and the tiny Hudson English sundew plant. Calluna heathlands can be found in the driest parts of the ecoregion, with stands of birch or oak trees mixed with European mountain ash--an ironic name for a tree species that occurs in these lowlands.

	The tiny Hudson English sundew plant lives by eating small insects. This amazing little plant attracts insects with dew-like, sweet and sticky drops on its leaves. When insects become stuck in the drops, the leaves envelop the prey and begin digesting it.

Wild Side

The machair, or dune grassland, supports a variety of animal species. However, blanket bogs, like other bogs, sustain only a few types of insects, amphibians, and a few birds. Blackcap, grasshopper, and willow warblers are found in areas dominated by trees, while tufted ducks, red-breasted mergansers, and sandwich terns make their homes on the small, rocky islands that have few or no trees. This is also a characteristic ecoregion for huge flocks of breeding seabirds. Broad-winged, soaring hawks called buzzards, which normally eat rabbits, sometimes compete with kestrels and peregrines for other small mammals. Tree mallow, a robust shrub that grows to be about 4 feet (1.2 m), has beautiful purplish flowers. Blackthorn is a spiny shrub with masses of small white flowers. Colorful flowers such as the bee orchid and the lesser butterfly orchid can be found in the heathlands. Also found here are roe deer, rabbits, common lizards, and Britain’s only poisonous snake, the adder, or common viper.

Cause for Concern

Like bogs in other parts of the world, those in this ecoregion are mined for fuel and soil conditioner. The landscape of this ecoregion has been altered by humans for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Today, forests occur in fragments in a landscape dominated by agriculture, cattle, villages, and other human influences. Heathland habitats are threatened by conversion to pasture, while mixed forests are threatened by logging.

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