A large area of land or water that contains a geographically distinct assemblage of natural communities that: Share a large majority of their species and ecological dynamics; Share similar environmental conditions, and; Interact ecologically in ways that are critical for their long-term persistence (source: WWF). In contrast to biomes, an ecoregion is generally geographically specific, is at a much finer scale, and contains ecologically interacting biota. For example, the “East African Montane Forest” eco- region of Kenya (WWF eco-region classification) is a geographically specific and coherent example of the globally occurring “tropical and subtropical forest” biome.