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Cause for Concern in the United States, Canada, Bermuda, Alaska
Nearctic
•
Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests
Western Great Lakes forests
Unfortunately, you would have to travel to remote areas in the northernmost reaches of this ecoregion to find forests that look like they did hundreds of years ago. Over the years, most of the original mature white and red pine forests have been logged to supply wood for a variety of uses. After logging, the forests have been replaced by younger stands of birch and aspen trees with only scattered pines. In this way, logging has changed the face of this ecoregion and caused major alterations in its biodiversity. In addition, extensive areas throughout the ecoregion have been converted to agricultural production and are increasingly being developed for new housing.
Cultivation and development have destroyed nearly all of the natural habitat in the Willamette Valley. Just one-tenth of one percent of the valley's native grasslands and oak savannas remains today. This tiny fragment of the original ecosystem is itself split into fragmented patches, the largest of which are no greater than 14 square miles (35 square kilometers). Most of the prairie and riparian areas are gone completely, and much of the original savanna has been converted to forest because of fire suppression. The Willamette Valley contains approximately 70 percent of the state's human population.
While 80 percent of the Alberta Mountain Forests are intact, there is still some concern over the future of the ecoregion. The greatest threat today is in the valleys, where major outdoor recreation facilities and growing towns are attracting more and more people, with more and more cars, which need more and more roads. Not only does road construction destroy habitat, but the new roads are impeding the movement of large carnivores and other wildlife. On average, 70 elk die from collisions with cars or trains each year in Banff National Park, where some five million visitors travel every year. In some areas, coal mining is another growing threat.
There is virtually no completely undisturbed habitat remaining in this ecoregion. Agricultural expansion from the south is converting aspen forests to cereal and hay crops. Other areas have been heavily logged or converted to community pastures for livestock grazing. There has also been extensive exploration for oil and gas. The caribou populations have been particularly threatened by habitat loss. And as people move deeper into areas occupied by grizzly bears and wolves, these species are being killed because they are viewed as "nuisance" animals.
Although this ecoregion is considered relatively stable, with about one-fourth of it still intact, it faces threats such as logging and overgrazing. In particular, conservationists are concerned about timber harvest in mature and old-growth forests that are home to the Mexican spotted owl and the northern goshawk. Other threats include fire suppression, mining, off-road-vehicle use, and fuel-wood gathering.
People have disregarded the wildlife in much of the Atlantic Coastal Pine Barrens ecoregion. Ninety percent of the native habitat has been lost to urbanization and suburban sprawl on the East Coast, with the rapid expansion of housing developments, retirement communities, and vacation homes. Fire suppression is also a major problem for these fire-adapted ecosystems: some species will not regenerate or grow well without fires, while fuel build-up can lead to very hot fires that kill everything.
Along streams and in old-growth forests of the Blue Mountains, habitats are being rapidly depleted because of extensive logging, livestock grazing, flood abatement, hydroelectric dams, and fire suppression. There has been a 90 percent decline in old-growth ponderosa pines, and continued logging threatens the remaining stands. Fire suppression and livestock grazing have resulted in shifts in species compositions from parklike stands of large ponderosa pine with open, grassy understories to dense fir understories prone to catastrophic fires. In the region's rivers and streams, 43 species of fish are at risk of extinction, including several species of salmon. Logging, livestock grazing, flood abatement, and other factors have degraded natural communities and ecological processes within aquatic areas and riparian zones. Other threats include exotic plants.
About 40 percent of this ecoregion remains fully intact. Most of the disturbed habitat is in the low- to mid-elevation forests. Valley bottoms and portions of the old-growth coastal rain forest have become fragmented in more than half of this region because of logging activities, including road-building. The resulting loss of habitat is of concern for species such as the spotted owl and grizzly bear, both of which need large areas of undisturbed habitat.
Although 70 percent of this ecoregion is considered intact, a variety of human activities pose increasing threats. These include logging, mining, agriculture, and livestock grazing. And the construction of highways and railways, accompanied by high fencing in some areas, has disrupted the north-south movement of species such as grizzly and black bears, wolverines, lynx, and fishers.
Extensive logging, road building, and hydroelectric development have caused serious damage to this ecoregion. Logging remains the primary threat to biodiversity, but other growing threats include fire suppression, exotic species invasions, and road building. A century of fire suppression has caused changes in communities of plants that depend on periodic fires for their stability. Human attempts to stop these fires altogether have caused a buildup of natural fuels and thus have inadvertently increased the extent and severity of fires when they do happen. The absence of periodic fires has also resulted in declines in rangeland integrity and increases in exotic species invasions.
