The Phawngpui National Park provides habitat for a range of birds including the rare Blyth's tragopan, falcon, sunbirds, dark-rumped swift, and Mrs. Hume's pheasant, which is the Mizoram state bird, and also rare animals like the mountain goat, slow loris, tiger, leopard, leopard cat, serow, goral, Asiatic black bear, stump-tailed macaque and capped langur. In 2000, rare bird species were recorded such as mountain bamboo partridge, oriental pied hornbill, purple cochoa, striped laughingthrush, grey sibia, black eagle and large-billed crow. The clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa) was spotted and documented for the first time in 1997. The landscape is the natural habitat of various grasses (in fact is the origin of the name, phawng in Lai dialect means meadow, and -pui is the suffix for great). The steep slopes are covered by orchids and rhododendrons, with areas of bamboos.