Fanjingshan

Fanjingshan rises within the Wuling range, in Guizhou province, in south-western China, and its altitude runs from 500 to 2,570 metres, which produces a very marked succession of vegetation belts: broadleaved evergreen forest below 1,300 metres, giving way higher up to deciduous forest, conifers and summit scrub. Geologically it is an anomaly: an island of metamorphic rock in the middle of a sea of karst, which has kept it isolated for millions of years.

That isolation explains its value. The mountain preserves numerous ancient and relict species originating in the Tertiary, with an extremely high degree of endemism: 46 locally endemic plant species, 1,010 endemic to China and four exclusive vertebrates. Two of them exist nowhere else in the world: the Fanjingshan fir (Abies fanjingshanensis) and the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus brelichi), of which some 700 to 800 individuals survive, all on this single massif. That concentration in one place is also its greatest fragility, because a disease or a natural disaster could wipe out the entire species. To them are added the Chinese giant salamander, the forest musk deer and Reeves's pheasant, and in all some 4,400 plant and 2,700 animal species have been recorded. Fanjingshan also preserves the most extensive and continuous primeval beech forest in the subtropical region and is one of the world's richest areas for gymnosperms, with a notable wealth of mosses favoured by the constant humidity.

The mountain has been a sacred Buddhist site since the Tang dynasty, and its temples, perched on rock spires, are part of its most recognisable image. It was declared a national nature reserve in 1978 and Chinese national natural heritage in 2013. On 2 July 2018, at the 42nd session of the World Heritage Committee held in Manama, it was inscribed on the World Heritage List, and that same year it joined the network of Biosphere Reserves under UNESCO's MAB programme. The main threat identified by IUCN is tourist pressure and the associated infrastructure development.