Copper Canyon Birding
Birding in Two Endemic Areas

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.

The Sierra Madre Occidental EBA is a subtropical coniferous forest with a complex flora. The mountains' biotic communities, descending from the highest elevations, are: fir forest, pine forest with aspen and alder, mixed pine-oak-madrone forest, oak-grasslands and desert grasslands on the Chihuahuan Desert foothills, subtropical deciduous forest on other foothills and on canyon slopes and a cottonwood-willow-cypress riparian habitat at the bottom of the canyons. The sierra has the highest diversity of agave, pine and oak and botanical studies have estimated that the sierra may have up to 3,500 plant species with the discovery of 2,400 species in just one valley. Climatic variations with elevation are best experienced when descending from a snow-clad conifer forest on the canyon rim and in just a few hours arriving at a blooming and fruit laden canyon floor.