Diversity is the hallmark of Olympic National Park. The park protects 922,651 acres, encompassing three distinctly different ecosystems — rugged glacier-capped mountains, wild Pacific coast, and magnificent old-growth temperate rain forest. These three ecosystems contain a unique array of habitats and life forms, resulting from thousands of years of geographic isolation, along with extreme gradients of elevation, temperature, and precipitation. Twenty-four endemic plant and animal species are found in Olympic National Park and nowhere else on earth.