Amami Gunto

Amami Gunto National Park was declared in 2017 and protects the Amami archipelago, lying between Kyushu and Okinawa, in the arc of the Ryukyu Islands. In 2021 its islands of Amami-Oshima and Tokunoshima became part, together with northern Okinawa and Iriomote, of the natural property inscribed by UNESCO under the biodiversity criterion.

The Ryukyus broke away from the Asian mainland millions of years ago and each island was left isolated, which produced a very marked pattern of endemism with minute distributions. The dominant vegetation is dense subtropical laurel forest, accompanied at the river mouths by some of the best-preserved mangroves in Japan and, along the shore, by coral reefs.

The flagship species is the Amami rabbit (Pentalagus furnessi), a lagomorph with short ears, dark fur and nocturnal habits regarded as a living fossil: it is the surviving representative of a lineage that vanished from the Asian mainland millions of years ago, and it lives only on Amami-Oshima and Tokunoshima. With it come Lidth's jay, endemic to Amami, alongside amphibians, reptiles and birds with equally restricted distributions. The main threats have been introduced predators, above all the mongoose and feral cats; the mongoose eradication programme on Amami-Oshima is reckoned one of the great recent successes of island conservation in Japan.