Wildlife Issues and Conservation: Bio-Diversity Hotspot

Hello again,

today is going to be a more positive day. While I was drinking out of my Giant Panda cup, I decided to start a blog series on the natural beauty of our planet. This blog series will portray and narate the beauty of our planet's 34 biodiversity hotspot.

A biodiversity hotspot is a biogeographic region with a significant reservoir of biodiversity that is threatened with destruction. To qualify as a hotspot, a region must meet two strict criteria. Each hotspot must contain at least 1,500 species of endemic vascular plants. It also must have lost at least 70% of it's original habitat.

To me, hotspots serve as a catch-22. They are both incredibly beautiful and yet, not as beautiful as they once had been. They are incredibly diverse, but not as diverse as they used to be. We desperately want to protect them and yet, they are the most threatened environments on the planet.

For the first entry in this series, we're going to talk about the California Floristic Province. This is the only hotspot almost completely enclosed within U.S. borders and is one of only four hotspots in northern and central America.

As the name suggests, the California Floristic Province is throughout most of California. It is a zone of Mediterranean-type climate with high levels of plant endemism. This hotspot also holds a number of endemic species who are incredibly threatened.

This hotspot is incredibly affected by wilderness destruction caused by commercial farming. Half of all the agricultural products used by U.S. consumers come from the California Floristic Province. Much like any habitat, this hotspot is heavily threatened by human encroachment, pollution, and land disection.

At one point, the California Floristic Province, covered 293,804 square kilometers. Today, only 73,451 square kilometers remain. In this remaining land there are:

2,124 endemic plant species
4 threatened endemic bird species
5 threatened endemic mammal species
8 threatened endemic amphibian species
2 extinct species
108,715 square kilometers of protected land!!!

This hotspot is incredibly unique, being as it is one of only five areas with Mediterranean-type climate throughout the world. It is characterized by hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters. Types of eco-systems are incredibly vast, including all of the following:

sagebrush steppe
prickly pear shrubland
coastal sage scrub
chaparral
juniper-pine woodland
upper montane-subalpine forest
alpine forest
riparian forest
redwood forests
mixed evergreen forests
Douglar fir forests
sequoia forests
coastal dunes
salt marshes

Mediterranear-type ecosystems are distinguished more by the endemism of its plants that its animals. 3,500 species of vascular plants thrive in this hotspot. Of those 3,500, over 2000 of them are endemic to the hotspot.

The California Floristic Province is home to the following regions:

THE SIERRA NEVADAS

THE TRANSVERSE RANGES OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

THE KLAMATH-SISKIYOU REGION

and THE CALIFORNIA COAST RANGES

The California Floristic Province is home to these spectacular endemic tree species:

THE GIANT SEQUOIA (Sequoiadendron giganteum)
and THE COASTAL REDWOOD (Sequoia sempervirens)

Picture (Giant Sequoia)

The California Floristic Province is home to these spectacular endemic birds:

THE GUADALUPE JUNCO (Junco insularis)
THE EXTINCT GAUDALUPE CARACARA (Polyborus lutosus) and THE GUADALUPE STORM-PETREL
and the largest North American Bird anc critically endangered CALIFORNIA CONDOR (Gymnogyps californianus)

Photo (California Condor)