TWO PARKS TAKEN UNDER CRITICAL ECOSYSTEM PARTNERSHIP FUND PROTECTION

PanARMENIAN.Net
11.03.2010 15:05 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenia has established two new protected areas that
will not only help globally threatened species, but will also protect
water resources, provide job opportunities and potentially nurture
transboundary cooperation in a region rife with political tension.

Both parks-Arevik National Park and Zangezur Sanctuary-are in the
southernmost region of Armenia, and Critical Ecosystem Partnership
Fund (CEPF) grant recipients worked toward their declaration as
protected areas.

"Southern Armenia is one of the key priority conservation areas in
the Caucasus," said Nugzar Zazanashvili, conservation director of the
WWF Caucasus Program. He added that the creation of these protected
areas creates a strong basis for developing an ecological network in
the South Caucasus.

Arevik National Park, at about 34,000 hectares, is on Armenia’s
borders with Iran and Azerbaijan. It encompasses broad-leaf forest,
Juniper open woodlands, subalpine and alpine meadows, semidesert
and mountain steppes. Caucasian leopards, vulnerable Bezoar goats,
brown bears, lynx and wild cats are among its residents, as well as
more than 1,500 species of vascular plants.

The 17,368-hectare Zangezur Sanctuary is on the border with
Azerbaijan. Grantee Khustup Nature Protection NGO helped the government
with management planning for the protected area. The park is important
as not only as home to the Armenian mouflon, which number only about
200-250 in the wild in Armenia, but also as host to four high mountain
lakes that serve as fresh water reservoirs. A variety of other rare
and endemic flora and fauna can be found there as well.

With the declaration of these parks, the total of new protected areas
achieved in the Caucasus Hotspot in part through the efforts of CEPF
grantees grew to 70,000 hectares, with another 160,000 hectares in
the pipeline.

Another CEPF grantee, the Fund for Biodiversity Conservation of
the Armenian Highland, provided financial support to the villages
surrounding these areas to launch new, sustainable sources of income,
such as bee-keeping, pomegranate processing and tourism development.

The surrounding communities also stand to benefit from the
establishment of the parks.

"Establishment of the two protected areas in the most remote part
of Armenia will contribute to stabilization of livelihoods for
local people of the southernmost region through development of
tourism/ecotourism, creation of new job opportunities and creation
of transboundary collaboration," said Karen Manvelyan, the national
coordinator for CEPF’s investment in Armenia.

The location of these new protected areas also provides new
opportunities for cooperation and the easing of tensions between
Armenia and its neighbors. Both Arevik and Zangezur border or are very
close to Ordubad National Park in Azerbaijan, and Arevik borders the
Kiamaky protected area in Iran.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress