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With many people around the world in COVID-19 lockdowns, International Mountain Day on 11 December might be the perfect moment to escape on a journey of discovery to the mountains. Mountains are a hugely important refuge for biodiversity – the theme for this year’s Day.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), its Wild for Life campaign, and its Vanishing Treasures programme, today launched a virtual journey across four mountain regions to visit and learn about some of the endangered species that roam these wild spaces.

Videos and fun quizzes help users learn about conservation efforts to maintain the delicate balance between animals and plants in the Tien Shan mountains in northern China; the Virunga mountains in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda; the “third pole” Hindu Kush Himalaya mountain region in south-central Asia; and Europe’s last great wilderness, the seven-country-straddling Carpathian mountains.

Did you know that an entire third of all of Europe’s plant species can be found in the Carpathians? One of these is called monkshood, a subspecies of a poisonous plant once used on arrows for hunting.

Or that one of the plants in the Tien Shan, Artemesia (wormwood), is used as a medicinal plant and to make a highly alcoholic beverage called absinthe?

Or that males of a native species of Himalayan deer are being poached for a body part used in a luxury consumer product.

Thriving ecosystems

Mountains provide shelter to endangered animal and plant species because of their high altitude and relative inaccessibility. Compressed climatic zones and isolation have created just the right conditions for a wide spectrum of life forms, some of them found nowhere else on Earth.

Mountains are also home to 15 per cent of the world's population and host about half of the world's biodiversity hotspots. They provide freshwater for everyday life to half of humanity. Their conservation is a key factor for sustainable development, especially Sustainable Development Goal 15.

Under threat

“Farming, commercial mining, logging and poaching all exact a heavy toll on biodiversity in fragile mountain habitats,” says Susan Gardner, head of UNEP’s Ecosystems Division.

“At the same time, climate change is causing glaciers to retreat, affecting freshwater supplies for millions of people, while animals and plants are being forced to adapt to the changing environment at a speed many of which are unable to achieve,” she adds.