Country

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

One ecoregion defines Tonga: the Tongan tropical moist forests, an Oceanian unit of the tropical moist broadleaf forest biome spread across the archipelago's 363 square miles of land. Its Nature Imperiled standing is the important signal, most of the native forest on these accessible low islands has been converted to cultivation over long human settlement, so remaining forest fragments matter. The climate itself is kind: warm, frost-free, and oceanic, with dependable humidity. Growers can raise the full South Pacific palette, fruit and timber trees, palms, root crops, and flowering shrubs, with salt wind and cyclone exposure the practical hazards to design around. Keeping plantings from pressuring what native moist forest remains is the conservation-minded choice on islands this transformed.