Country

Cook Islands: one ecoregion. Each with its climate now and toward 2050, and its conservation tier.

A single ecoregion, the Cook Islands tropical moist forests, encompasses the Cook Islands - at 82 square miles one of the smallest forest ecoregions in the Oceanian realm, and ranked Nature Could Recover. It spans the group's two faces: high volcanic Rarotonga with rainforest climbing its interior slopes, and low coral atolls where the same warm, humid oceanic climate meets thin coral soils and salt exposure. Growing conditions are tropical and steady, with rainfall rather than temperature varying between islands and seasons. On the high islands, planting is straightforward rainforest-climate gardening; on the atolls, salt tolerance and soil-building decide everything. As on most isolated Pacific islands, the native forest is small and recoverable but sensitive, so garden escapes carry outsized risk.