Conservation

Most of the conservation plans so far carried out in Jordan are based on protecting parts of the ecosystem in different habitats in the country. Such conserved areas are national parks, nature reserves, range reserves or just reserves. Such reserves were designed to be used for recreation such as the national parks or for conserving nature such as the natural reserves or to be used for organised grazing and studying grazing plants and their carrying capacity. In general, reserves act as reservoirs of genetic resources and in-situ refuges for rare and endangered elements of local species and varieties important for biological diversity.

A list of the present reserves, year of initiation, the responsible body, and their objectives is given in below

Conserving ecosystems, populations or a single endangered species of plant have never been a specific objective of the reserves. However, a series of reserves has been established in Jordan for different reasons since 1946, some being recently initiated such as the Dana Reserve in 1993 which was surveyed and a total number of 550 plant species recorded within its borders.

Nevertheless, most of the reserves have never been surveyed or analysed to know the total number of the species growing within them or the status of these species. Despite the limited time spent studying their botany, it was possible to locate rare and even endemic species, such as Crocus moabiticus, Biarum eximium in Daba'a Reserve (Al-Eisawi, 1986; Al-Eisawi & Hatough, 1987); Iris edomensis, Cupressus sempervirens in Dana Reserve and Phillyria media in Zubia Reserve. It is expected that the biological diversity in reserves of the country is high. A complete survey of these reserves would be of great importance to understand the actual of biological diversity of the country.

Status of conservation

Conservation in Jordan is handled either by the government as represented by the Ministry of Agriculture or the Ministry of Tourism or by non-governmental organisations (NGO's) represented mostly by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature. Some of these reserves have mainly one purpose such as those designated for recreation and tourism and those designated for range management. Other reserves have two purposes, one is to protect natural vegetation and the second is to protect or to reintroduce endangered and extinct animals such as

Shaumari Reserve, Zubia and Wadi Al-Mujeb Reserves. A number can be considered as very well protected and might be used as models for the protection of nature and reintroduction of extinct animals. Others are not well protected and from time to time are badly grazed up to the limit of destruction.

So far, other methods of conservation, especially ex-situ conservation, have not been adopted in Jordan. Botanical gardens, seed banks, gene banks or means of micro-propagation methods for conservation of rare, endangered and endemic species have not been created