Where Wildlife Lives — Habitat Regions of the United States and Canada

The United States and Canada can be divided into at least eight broad habitat regions, each with its own diversity of plant communities and wildlife (biodiversity). The boundaries of these habitat regions are not formal, official, or fixed by nature. In fact, I see them as more of a continuum, with broad transitional areas between habitat regions and large islands of other habitat types within each region. Wildlife species living within these habitat regions are usually not fixed either, but a definite relationship does exist between the plant communities and the wildlife found within each habitat region.

Eastern Deciduous Forest

The Eastern Deciduous Forest Habitat Region extends from the Atlantic Ocean to eastern Texas and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, covering roughly the eastern third of the United States and Canada. The Eastern Deciduous Forest is composed of many different forest communities, but most of them are dominated by specific groupings of broadleaved or deciduous trees that gradually blend into each other with changes in topography and climate.

When the first European settlers came ashore in this habitat region in the 1600s, they stood at the edge of an almost solid forest that extended west to the Mississippi River and slightly beyond. Although about 95 percent of this original forest was cleared for farms, cities, and transportation corridors, it is now reestablishing itself where farmland has been abandoned. In southern Canada, New England, and the Great Lakes area, the Eastern Deciduous Forest Habitat Region is characterized by hardy deciduous trees, such as sugar maple, beech, and basswood, intermingled with coniferous pine and hemlock. As the forest extends south along the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains, other tree species gradually become dominant, including shagbark hickory and many varieties of oak. The American chestnut was the most common tree in this region until about a hundred years ago, when an imported disease began killing the trees. Today, the American chestnut hovers near extinction.

As the Eastern Deciduous Forest spreads south into the Mississippi Valley and northern Florida, it gradually becomes dominated by deciduous trees typical of the Deep South, including magnolia, southern red oak, and live oak. The southern pine forests that dominate the coastal plains of the Atlantic and Gulf states are within the greater deciduous forest region, but ecologists classify them as subclimax forests, meaning that if these are left undisturbed, they eventually will be replaced by broad-leaved trees.

The Eastern Deciduous Forest region also includes many thousands of square miles of beaches, coastal marshes, and rich estuaries along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. These wetlands provide habitat for many species of resident and migratory birds, mammals, and other wildlife. Brown pelicans are common summer inhabitants of the Atlantic Coast, as are laughing gulls and Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphins. The Gulf Coast, from Florida to Texas, is world famous for populations of rails, sandpipers, and other migratory shorebirds. The sole surviving natural population of whooping cranes winters on an island along the Texas Gulf Coast.

The Eastern Deciduous Forest is home to a large number and diversity of wildlife species, both resident and migratory. White-tailed deer, black bears, wild turkeys, raccoons, and opossums live in the densely forested habitats of the Eastern Deciduous Forest, as do many species of small mammals, turtles, woodpeckers, and owls — as well as warblers and other neotropical songbirds, species that winter in the tropical habitats of the New World. The Appalachian Mountains and Atlantic Coast serve as major migration corridors for many thousands of hawks, vultures, and other birds of prey each fall and spring. The coastal estuaries and marshes of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts provide nesting, resting, and wintering habitat for literally millions of shorebirds, waterfowl, and other migratory birds. The southern forested part of the Eastern Deciduous Forest — including coastal pine forests and cypress swamps — harbors many resident species of birds, small mammals, and reptiles, such as alligators, not found farther north.

Some wildlife-viewing highlights of this habitat region are:

Carter Caves State Resort Park, accessible from Interstate 64 in eastern Kentucky near the border with Ohio and West Virginia, is an excellent place to explore natural limestone caves and see the oak-hickory and mixed pine and hardwood forests described by E. Lucy Braun in her classic book Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America. Here you may see white-tailed deer, red and gray foxes, beavers, and other wetland-dependent wildlife. In the winter thousands of endangered Indiana bats hibernate in Bat Cave.

Hanging Rock State Park, about 25 miles north of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, offers more than 18 miles of hiking trails and a breathtaking panorama of the mixed deciduous and hardwood forest of the Piedmont region of North Carolina. A diverse wildlife population includes white-tailed deer, bobcats, and gray foxes, which are sometimes observed at night by campers. The park hosts a variety of neotropical songbirds, whippoorwills, and migratory raptors, including turkey vultures, black vultures, and broad-winged hawks, which can be observed from Hanging Rock in autumn and spring.

Shenandoah National Park, in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, a short drive west of Washington, D.C., gives motorists an excellent opportunity to observe white-tailed deer and other wildlife typical of the Eastern Deciduous Forest. The park is bisected by the 105mile-long Skyline Drive and by the Appalachian Trail. The national park boasts more than 1,100 species of flowering plants, including 18 varieties of orchids. The park is also home to almost 6,000 white-tailed deer, more than 300 black bears, and a host of small mammals. About 200 bird species have been observed in the park.

Gus A. Engling Wildlife Management Area, about 100 miles northeast of Waco,

Texas, is one of the most scenic and diverse places in East Texas to view wildlife of the Eastern Deciduous Forest. Rolling hills of oak, hickory,...