>>2496881>mostly desertThere are more than 4,000 species of plants in the Sonoran desert and transition zone of Arizona alone that are known as of the time of this post (this number is for example, over 500 species higher than the known cataloged vascular plant species of NY state). This is not counting fungi or lichen species. It ranks 3rd in the entire US in this metric at the time of this post. More are discovered every year. AZGFD manages over 800 native non-insect animal species. Over 1/4th of AZ is temperate forest, only 2/5ths is true arid.
The largest known fungal colony specimen in the world (also possibly the largest living "animal" in the world) was discovered in OR (Armillaria ostoyae), the largest and possibly oldest clonal tree specimen in the world was found in south-central UT (Pando). The largest and highest scoring trophy Rocky Mountain Elk to date have been consistently taken from AZ (1st in total specimens and highest scores) and UT (2nd, but first if measuring number of trophy Elk per sq mi area).
The climate of every western state is more varied in every measurement than any individual eastern US state. The topography of every wester state is more varied than any eastern US state. The amount of public and ironically even private land in every western state is higher than the amount of public and private lands in every eastern US state (east of the Mississippi), due to the size disparity of eastern and western states.
