Tanzania - Eastern Arc Mountains Forests of Tanzania

"The term ‘Eastern Arc’ was introduced in 1985 to describe the forest-capped ancient crystalline mountains of eastern Tanzania and south-east Kenya, which are under the influence of the Indian Ocean climatic regime, and therefore contain predictable local climates (Lovett 1985). The area has been identified in all the major analyses of global biological priority. Starting in the 1970s, the ‘Eastern Arc Mountains’ were identified as a component of the Afromontane archipelago-like regional centre of endemism by White (1983). The Eastern Arc Mountains are also a Global 200 Ecoregion of WWF (Olson and Dinerstein 1998), part of a biodiversity hotspot of Conservation International (Mittermeier et al., 1998; 2004) and an Endemic Bird Area of BirdLife International (ICBP 1992; Stattersfield et al., 1998). It is also one of the regions of the world facing the most urgent threat in terms of potential species extinctions (Brooks et al., 2002; Ricketts et al., 2005). These studies all indicate the extreme biological importance of the area in global terms. The Eastern Arc is mentioned in the WCMC review of the coverage of World Heritage Sites as an ecoregion where there is no current World Heritage property (Magin and Chape, 2004). Thirteen separate mountain blocks comprise the Eastern Arc."

Source: UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List