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First plant conservation translocation in Armenia: restoring globally threatened wild pear populations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2024

Anna Asatryan Open the ORCID record for Anna Asatryan [Opens in a new window]
Anna Asatryan*
Affiliation:
Institute of Botany after A.Takhtajyan of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, Yerevan, Armenia
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

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Type
Conservation News
Information
Oryx , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , May 2024 , pp. 286
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC BY 4.0.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International

Armenia lies in one of the centres of wild pear diversity and domestication. The diversity within Pyrus L. in the country is remarkable: 12 of the 32 pear species occurring in Armenia are country endemics. They never form groves, but occur as single trees and in small groups at 1,000–2,200 m altitude, mainly in arid open woodlands, on roadsides and in oak forests. Small test groups of saplings of three threatened pear species were planted in 2022 within their natural range near the villages of Artavan and Vardahovit in Vayots Dzor province and Lanjar in Ararat province. The species are all categorized as threatened on the IUCN Red List and all are endemic to Armenia: the Critically Endangered P. gergerana Gladkova and Endangered P. hajastana Mulk. and P. sosnovskyi Fed. The results of this preliminary experiment were used in planning a larger plantation.

In November–December 2023, 360 saplings of P. gergerana, P. hajastana and the endemic and Endangered P. daralagezi Mulk. were planted in the wild near Arates, Vardahovit and Herher villages. The saplings were raised from seed in Artavan Conservation Nursery and Yerevan Botanical Garden. This population restoration was implemented by the Armenian Society of Biologists, an NGO, in collaboration with the Institute of Botany after A. Takhtajyan of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, in a project supported by Fondation Franklinia in 2020–2023 (project number 2020–16). It followed the first in situ study of the threatened endemic pears of Armenia carried out in 2016–2018 with funding from Fauna & Flora and The Global Trees Campaign.

This is the first plant conservation translocation in Armenia. The project contributed to both in situ and ex situ conservation of these threatened pear species. Some of the collected seeds were stored in the seed bank of the Department of Conservation of Genetic Resources of Armenian Flora of the Institute of Botany, and 50 saplings of the threatened pear species were added to the living plant collection of the Yerevan Botanical Garden.

Wild pear habitat near the village of Artavan, Armenia. Photo: Anna Asatryan.