Country

Saint Barthélemy: one ecoregion. Each with its climate now and toward 2050, and its conservation tier.

Saint Barthélemy's single roster ecoregion is the Bahamian-Antillean mangroves, the coastal wetland system that threads through the Bahamas and the Antilles wherever sheltered shorelines allow. On a small, low, dry island this is a telling assignment: the island's most distinctive natural vegetation is coastal, salt-tolerant, and tied to lagoons and protected bays rather than to interior forest. The gardening reality follows. Conditions are warm year-round, rainfall is modest and seasonal, and salt spray and wind reach nearly everything, so the plants that succeed are the ones the mangrove-coast environment already favors: salt- and drought-tolerant trees, coastal shrubs, and succulents, with thirstier tropicals confined to watered, sheltered ground.