Growing at altitudes up to 5,000 meters (16,400 feet), just beneath Andean glaciers, the hardy Polylepis is the world’s highest altitude forest. No other habitat is proportionally more important for all that it influences below, ensuring that freshwater, including glacial melt, is captured in its watersheds and reaches not only nearby mountain villages, but also the millions of people in lowland towns and cities who depend upon it, including for agriculture. It supports a unique, globally rare, and rapidly disappearing ecosystem, vital to the biodiversity and peoples of the Andes.