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The Global 200 is a collection of the Earth's most biologically diverse and representative terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats--areas where the Earth's natural wealth is most distinctive and rich, where its loss will be most severely felt, and where we must fight the hardest for conservation.
The central concept is simple: By conserving the broadest variety of the world's habitats, we can conserve the broadest variety of the world's species and most endangered wildlife, as well as whole communities and ecosystems.
Regardless of their location, Global 200 ecoregions are all unique expressions of biological diversity, each with its own highly distinctive species, ecological processes, and evolutionary phenomena. Some sites--Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the Galapagos Islands, the Florida Everglades--are familiar. Others are less renowned: South Africa's Fynbos shrublands, for example, which contain extraordinary plant richness, and Indonesia's complex coral reefs and marine ecosystems, habitat for hawksbill and leatherback turtles, carpet sharks, and moray eels.
The Global 200 ecoregion-based focus stems from the recognition that biological diversity is not evenly distributed, nor is it defined by political boundaries. Some regions or sites are more distinctive or functionally more important than others.
To achieve conservation results that are ecologically viable, it is necessary to conserve networks of key sites, migration corridors, and the ecological processes that maintain healthy ecosystems.
From arctic seas to coastal forests, from isolated islands to desolate deserts, the Global 200 is the blueprint for WWF's ambitious campaign to help leave our children a living planet.
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