Exploring Effective Conservation of Charismatic Flora: Orchids in Armenia as a Case Study

Plants are the bedrock of life on Earth but are increasingly threatened with extinction. The most cost-effective way of conserving plant diversity is through Protected Areas (PAs). However, the locality, size, and management of PAs are crucial for effectively maintaining diversity and have been criticized as currently inadequate. Using Armenia as our study site and orchids as our study taxa, we sought to (1) identify spatial patterns of orchid diversity hotspots and corresponding PA network sites; (2) examine if the current PA network is effective at capturing orchid species richness and diversity and (3) explore the relationship between the range of area suitability of species and level of protection. We used data collected from herbarium, field visits and GBIF occurrence records. Using freely available mapping software, we created heatmaps of observations and species richness. We compared PA sites based on the number of species (species richness) and diversity (Shannon-Weiner Index). Species range was developed using the MaxEnt model and a correlation analysis was performed against the proportion of the range within PA. We found that 57% of PA sites have a representation of at least one species of orchid, but some threatened species are not presented within any PA site. The Tavush and Syunik province not only held the highest species richness (>10 species), but the PA network within also held high orchid diversity (2.5 diversity index value for Dilijan National Park). We did not find a significant relationship between the range of area suitability for orchids and protection; however, all our target species had less than 30% of their range under protection. Our study highlights important challenges related to the limitations of available data, and we discuss these implications towards effective conservation outcomes for orchids for the region.