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Gunung Leuser

This biosphere reserve and national park covers a vast area of tropical rain forest in northern Sumatra with a range of ecosystems: lowland evergreen dipterocarp forest, lower and upper montane rain forest, peat swamp forest, forest over limestone, sub-alpine meadows and heathlands, freshwater lakes and rivers, and sulphur mineral pools.

Gunung Leuser NP is proven as a rich yet vulnerable natural laboratory. MacKinnon and MacKinnon (1986) stated that Gunung Leuser has the highest score for its conservation contribution to Indo Malaya conservation area.

Leuser is a habitat for most fauna, ranging from mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians to fish and invertebrates. It is a region which has the longest list of birds in the world, up to 380 species with 350 of them found in this Park.

Gunung Leuser is also home to 36 of 50 Sundaland endemic bird species. Almost 65% of 129 species of mammals in Sumatra is recorded in this area. Gunung Leuser ecosystem is a habitat for key fauna such as Sumatra elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus), tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae), rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) and orang-utan (Pongo abelii). Read more about this reserve on the UNESCO Biosphere Reserves website.