India

India is one of the seventeen megadiverse countries in the world and contains four biodiversity hotspots: the Himalaya, the Western Ghats, the Indo-Burma region and the Nicobar Islands. From the ice of the Himalayan summits to the reefs of the Indian Ocean, it strings together conifer forests, Terai grasslands, the deserts of the Thar, monsoon forests, laterite plateaux and the largest mangrove in the world, the Sundarbans, where tigers swim between channels and drink brackish water. The country holds most of the planet's wild tigers, two thirds of Indian rhinoceroses and almost all of the wild Asian elephants. The Western Ghats, a range running parallel to the southwest coast, catch the monsoon and concentrate a very high number of amphibians and plants found nowhere else.