The tallest mountain range in the world, the Himalaya is also a youngest and is still growing. This range deprives the great Tibetan plateau from monsoon and forms the rain shadow. And on the other hand it also blocks the cold northern winds reaching the Indian plains during winter. Because of these phenomena the southern parts of the Himalaya is lush green, productive and prone to erosion due to full brunt of monsoon, whereas the northern Tibetan plateau remained arid region. This uniqueness in the climate found due to altitudinal variation allows Nepal to experience from Tropical to Alpine bio-climate, despite our geographical position. Hence Nepal boasts from the large terrestrial rhinos and elephants of the tropics to the snow leopard and Tibetan Argali of alpine region.
Nepal has been ranked top ten highest flowering plant diversity out of 25 Asian countries. On a world scale Nepal lies 27th in the richness scale on floral diversity. With just over 0.1% of the earths land surface occurring in Nepal, it supports globally known 4.2% butterflies (635 spp), 2.2 % of fresh water fish species (185 spp), 1.1 % amphibians (43 spp.), 1.5% reptile (100 spp.), 8.5% of birds (860 spp.) and 4.2% mammals (181 spp).
Distribution of butterflies, Freshwater fishes, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds, Mammals Group Name #1 Terai and Siwaliks Midhills Highlands
Spp. % Spp. % Spp. %
Butterflies 635 325 51.2 557 87.7 82 12.9
Freshwater fishes 185 154 83.2 76 41.1 6 3.2
Amphibians 43 22 51.2 29 67.4 9 20.9
Reptiles 100 68 68 56 56 13 13
Freshwater fishes 844 648 *77.8 691 *83 413 *49.7
Mammals 181 91 *51.1 110 *61.5 80 *45.0
Total* 1988 1308 *66.3 1519 *77.0 603 *30.5
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