Amami-Ōshima Island, Tokunoshima Island, northern part of Okinawa Island, and Iriomote Island
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How it came to be
This natural site covers 42,698 hectares in five parts on four islands: Amami-Ōshima, Tokunoshima, northern Okinawa Island and Iriomote. In the late Miocene the opening of the Okinawa Trough cut the land off from the Eurasian continent, and animals stranded on the small islands evolved on their own. About 36 per cent of Japan's globally threatened vertebrates live here.
The Amami rabbit, the only species in its genus, lives only on Amami-Ōshima and Tokunoshima, and the Iriomote cat only on Iriomote. The cat was found by Yukio Togawa in 1965 and described by Yoshinori Imaizumi in 1967. The flightless Okinawa rail was described as a new species in 1981 by Yoshimaro Yamashina and T. Mano.
Japan submitted a nomination in 2017, but in May 2018 IUCN advised deferral and the government withdrew it. One reason was a need to rethink the boundaries to take in land returned from the US military's Northern Training Area. Part of that land was added to Yanbaru National Park and to the nominated area, and the site was inscribed on 26 July 2021.
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