Photograph by   Western Europe: Northern Scotland, United Kingdom Temperate Coniferous Forests   8,500 square miles (22,000 square kilometers) -- about the size of New Hampshire Critical/Endangered

· Soggy Soils
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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Soggy Soils

This small ecoregion covers the mountains of the northern part of the British Island. Blanket bogs of wet, compacted organic matter are the region’s most notable habitat.

Special Features

This mountainous ecoregion in the northern part of the United Kingdom supports bogs and subalpine vegetation. Although this area is primarily forest, bogs are important because they host many rare, endemic, and unusual species. This conifer forest habitat, interspersed with bogs and other wetland elements, is host to native Scots pine, birch, willow, aspen, and oak trees.

Click, clock! Click, clock! Click, clock! That’s the sound of a capercaillie calling for a mate. In the 1970s the population of capercailles in Scotland was estimated at 20,000 birds, all descendants from birds reintroduced from Sweden in the 19th century. At that time, the Scottish capercaillie had become extinct, probably due to the extensive felling of pinewoods. Today their number has dropped to about 4,000, largely due to continued loss of habitat.

Wild Side

The native pinewoods here support Scotland’s rarest bird, the cock of the wood, or capercaillie. It shares the forest with the Scottish crossbill and other birds. Butterflies such as chequered skippers, large whites, small whites, and green-veined whites flit through the forests of juniper, pine, wild cherry, blackthorn, and oak, looking for nectar in clustered bellflowers, harebells, and lesser marshworts. Red squirrels, brown hares, wildcats, weasels, red deer, pine martens, and red foxes also call this ecoregion home.

Cause for Concern

Species in this ecoregion are threatened by a combination of recreation, tourism, and unsustainable resource exploitation such as logging and peat removal. Development and fragmentation of habitat are other causes for concern.

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