Every kind of landscape to be found in the northern Hemisphere other than desert and ocean can be found here including magnificent snow-capped mountains and glaciers, precipitous Danxia cliffs and wonderful Karst formations.
 
The region has 118 snow-capped mountains over 5,000 meters above sea level, varying widely in form. With them come many hectares of untouched forest and several hundred glacial lakes.
 
The Danxia landforms in the Laojun Mountains in the Lijiang Area, picturesque in their forest setting, are both the biggest and the best-formed examples of this geomorphology in China. In places, the red cliffs have weathered away to leave formations said to look like tortoises. On the aptly named thousand tortoise mountain, one can imagine at first a single large tortoise and then on closer inspection see it to be made up of the regular ranks of thousands of small tortoises.
 
First among China's 17 key bio-diversity areas, the site with its precious gene bank, has been acclaimed as being of world class importance. Though accounting for less than 0.4 percent of the area of the country, the region plays host to more than 20 percent of the country's most important plants and 25 percent of its animal species. Today the region is home to 77 animals under state-level protection including the Yunnan golden monkey, antelope, snow leopard, Bengali tiger and black-necked crane. It has 34 kinds of plants under state-level protection including the China fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata), the spinulose tree fern (Cyathea spinulosa) and the Chinese yew (Taxus chinensis).
 
Every year when spring comes again, the region becomes a sea of flowers. There are 200 kinds of azaleas, nearly 100 kinds of gentian (Gentiana scabra), and primroses, Scrophylariaceae, Cypripedium and lilies.