page_title: Yu Shan
section_title: Flora and fauna
hierarchical_section_title: Yu Shan / Flora and fauna
caption_attribution_description: These are the 'Husband and Wife Trees', or Fūqī Shù 夫妻樹, which you can see soon after driving into the Yu Shan National Park.
context_page_description: Yu Shan or Yushan, also known as Mount Jade, Jade Mountain, or Mount Yu, and known under Japanese rule as Mount Niitaka, is the highest mountain on Taiwan at 3,952 m above sea level, giving Taiwan the 4th-highest maximum elevation of any island in the world. It is the highest point in the western Pacific region outside of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Yushan and surrounding mountains belong to Yushan Range. The area was once in the ocean; it rose to its current height because of the Eurasian Plate's movement over the Philippine Sea Plate.
  The mountains are now protected as the Yushan National Park. The national park is Taiwan's largest, highest and least accessible national park. It contains the largest tract of wilderness remaining in Taiwan and is also valued for its pristine forests and faunal diversity, including many endemic species. On July 21, 2009, Yushan was elected one of 28 finalists in the New7Wonders of Nature voting campaign. It even had held the top position in the “Mountains and Volcanoes” category on the list of first round voting of the 77 nominees ended on July 7, 2009.
context_section_description: Taiwan, with the tropic of Cancer across the center of the island, has a climate between tropical and subtropical. The average temperature is 23.5 °C (74.3 °F). Here low elevation areas support evergreen broadleaved forests.  As elevation increases, evergreen broadleaved forests are gradually replaced by deciduous forests and coniferous forests. At mountain peaks with alpine conditions, only mosses, liverworts and occasionally grasses can be found on the ground.
  All of the above vegetation variations can be seen in the Yushan area from low foothills to high summits with an elevation difference of 3.6 km (2.2 mi).  Because of this wide climatic and vegetation variations, this environment nurtures the richest and most diversified wildlife in Taiwan.   Preliminary investigations reveal that there are 130 species of birds, 28 species of mammals, 17 species of reptiles, 12 species of amphibians and 186 species of butterflies in Yushan National Park.  In fact, Yushan is nicknamed "the ark" by academics who see it as a repository of Taiwan's rare species. It is almost an encyclopedia of Taiwan's ecological systems, a geological museum and an important habitat of one-third of Taiwan's endemic species, such as:
  Formosan serow (台灣長鬃山羊)
  Reeves's muntjac (台灣山羌)
  Formosan black bear (台灣黑熊)
  Formosan blue magpie (台灣藍鵲)
  Formosan rock macaque (台灣獼猴)
  Hemimyzon taitungensis (台東間爬岩鰍) and Varicorhinus tamusuiensis (Oshima) – Two unique fish species living in the Lekuleku River area.
caption: "Husband and Wife Trees", or "Fuci Trees" (夫妻樹). These are two surviving Chamaecyparis formosensis trees from a 1963 forest fire
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon DIGITAL IXUS 50", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2006:09:02 16:13:45", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image Tag 0x1001": "2048", "Image Tag 0x1002": "1536", "Image Rating": "0", "Image ExifOffset": "298", "Image XPTitle": "[0, 0]", "Image XPComment": "[0, 0]", "Image XPAuthor": "[0, 0]", "Image XPKeywords": "[0, 0]", "Image XPSubject": "[0, 0]", "Image CustomRendered": "Normal", "Image ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "Image WhiteBalance": "Auto", "Image DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "Image SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/250", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2006:09:02 16:13:45", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2006:09:02 16:13:45", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "255/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "29/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1536", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2048", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "64000/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "81920/9", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera"}