China's varied geography and climate has created a wealth of wildlife habitats: wetlands, alpine mountains, mixed deciduous-conifer forests, coastlines, tropical forests, deserts, and river systems, but because of habitat loss and deforestation pressure has been put on the environment to such an extent, that some high-profile creatures has been brought to the edge of extinction.
Most famous of these is the Giant Panda, which survives in pockets of high-altitude bamboo forest across the southwest. The Giant Pandas are highly endangered and now there are only around 600 of them left in the world. Mountains are home to the few surviving Snow Leopards. Rare Siberian Tigers haunt the northeastern highlands, while the critically endangered South China Tiger can be found in reserves in Fujian and Guangxi. The tropical southeastern region has clouded leopards and many primates and birds. The Yangtze River even has a species of freshwater dolphin but there are very few left and scientists even believed it to be extinct for a time.
Less well-known rarities include the snub-nosed golden monkey and Chinese alligator, both of which it is possible to see in the wild. Birdlife can be prolific, however, with freshwater lakes along the Yangtze and in western Guizhou, along with the vast saline Qinghai Lake, providing winter refuge for hosts of migratory wildfowl - including rare Siberian and black-necked cranes.
In all China has almost 500 animal species, 1,189 species of birds, more than 320 species of reptiles and 210 species of amphibians. There are more than 32,000 species of plant life scattered over the different parts of the country, grown especially in the Northern Hemisphere's Frigid Zone as well as Temperate and Tropical zones of China.
