BirdLife, the UK conservation group with the world's most complete data on birds, has mapped out 218 endemic bird areas (EBAs). Biodiversity that has evolved and has become uniquely confined into small areas are known as centers of endemism, and they posses not only a variety of endemic birds but also other animals and plants not found anywhere else. The natural habitats in most of the EBAs is tropical lowland forest and montane forest, and Mexico is one of the world's most biodiverse countries with 22 EBAs. There are 7 countries with more than 10 EBAs and only Indonesia and Brazil have more endemic areas.
El Fuerte Sinaloa is in the Northwest Pacific Slope EBA and has a prominence of dry tropical deciduous forest, thorn forest, and the tropical riparian habitat of the Fuerte River. Mexican dry forests have the highest level endemism of all Neotropical dry forests and the Sonoran Desert, just to the north, also harbors an impressive array of unique diversity.
The geographical location where the Sonoran Desert and the Sinaloan forest form a transition of habitats also forms a transition between the Neartic and the Neotropical biomes. This area is now known as the Sonoran-Sinaloan transition tropical dry forest. |
