Eastern Himalayan broadleaf forests

The Eastern Himalayan broadleaf forests is a temperate broadleaf forest ecoregion found in the middle elevations of the eastern Himalayas, including parts of Nepal, India, Bhutan, Myanmar and China. These forests have an outstanding richness of wildlife.

This ecoregion covers an area of 83,100 km² (32,100 mi²) and constitutes a band of temperate broadleaf forests lying on steep mountain slopes of the Himalayas between approximately 2,000 and 3,000 m (6,600 and 9,800 ft). It extends from the Kali Gandaki River in Nepal across Sikkim and West Bengal in India, Bhutan, the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and neighboring Myanmar.^{[citation needed]} China's Chayu Nature Reserve also has a very small part of this ecoregion.

The temperate broadleaf forests transition into the Himalayan subtropical pine forests and the Himalayan subtropical broadleaf forests at lower elevations, and into the Eastern Himalayan subalpine conifer forests at higher elevations. This area receives over 2000 mm of rainfall per year, mostly falling from May to September during the monsoon.^{[citation needed]}

The Eastern Himalayan broadleaf forests are diverse and species-rich, with a great diversity (of oaks and rhododendrons in particular) and many endemic species including plants of Indomalayan, Indochinese, Himalayan, Eastern Asiatic and even Gondwanan origin.

The ecoregion has two broad forest types: evergreen and deciduous. In both types of forests, the dominant trees are Pinus roxburghii, Pinus hwangshanensis, Juniperus tibetica, Shorea robusta, Olea europaea subsp. cuspidata, and Taxus sumatrana. Evergreen forests are characterized by oaks (Quercus spp.), chiefly Quercus lamellosa, together with Lithocarpus pachyphylla, Rhododendron arboreum, Rhododendron falconeri, Rhododendron thomsonii, Magnolia doltsopa, Magnolia cathcartii, Exbucklandia populnea, Symplocos cochinchinensis, Taiwania cryptomerioides, Magnolia spp., Cinnamomum spp., and Machilus spp. The many rhododendron species include more than fifty in Sikkim and another sixty in Bhutan.

In the deciduous forests meanwhile the predominant tree species are Himalayan maple (Acer campbellii), Juglans regia, Alnus nepalensis, Betula alnoides, Betula utilis, Larix griffithii, Tsuga dumosa, Picea brachytyla, and Echinocarpus dasycarpus.

Finally in Eastern Nepal there are wetter areas dominated by a mixture of Magnolia campbellii, Acer campbellii and Osmanthus suavis along with Himalayan hazel (Corylus ferox).

The forests are home to over 500 species of bird some of which migrate to the higher Himalayas in the hot summer. There are twelve near-endemic bird species as well as the strictly endemic rufous-throated wren-babbler. A number of bird species especially pheasant, tragopan and hornbill are easily threatened by changes to their habitat and those found here include the globally threatened rufous-necked hornbill (Aceros nipalensis), Sclater's monal (Lophophorus sclateri), white-bellied heron (Ardea insignis), Blyth's tragopan (Tragopan blythii) and Ward's trogon (Harpactes wardi).