Taiwan occupies just 36,000 square kilometres — smaller than Switzerland — yet supports over 64,000 documented species of plants, animals, fungi, and microorganisms. That figure represents approximately 3.8 per cent of the world’s known species on just 0.02 per cent of Earth’s surface. Of those 64,000, around 10,000 are endemic — found nowhere else on the planet.

To understand why, it helps to look at geography. Taiwan sits at the intersection of the Holarctic and Paleotropical floristic kingdoms: its northern flora resembles that of Japan and northern China, while its southern flora has affinities with the tropical forests of Southeast Asia and the Philippines. The island’s dramatic topography — rising from sea level to nearly 4,000 metres in just a few dozen kilometres — creates a vertical stacking of climate zones, each supporting its own distinct community of organisms. Add to this the isolation effect of Taiwan’s island geography: when sea levels rose at the end of the last Ice Age some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, populations of plants and animals found themselves cut off from mainland relatives and began evolving independently.

The results are striking. Endemism rates in Taiwan are particularly high among insects (30.5 per cent), mammals (20.1 per cent), and reptiles (17.3 per cent). Nearly a quarter of Taiwan’s over 4,300 vascular plant species are found nowhere else on Earth. For the wildlife traveller, this means that Taiwan does not simply offer more of what you might see in mainland China or Japan — it offers things you cannot see anywhere else.