COP17 of the Convention on Biological Diversity is under way in Yerevan, yet the state of the country's natural assets often sits at odds with the conference agenda. On the shore of Lake Sevan, scraps of fishing nets and plastic litter have piled up, stones are coated in algae, and debris is tangled in the reed beds along the water. This is the lake Armenia presents as one of its chief natural treasures.

In Syunik, the same contradiction runs deeper. The Shikahogh Reserve, founded in 1958, has 1,100 recorded vascular plant species and 214 vertebrate species, including over 150 birds. Roughly one-sixth of the reserve has now dropped out of its protection regime: forest there has been cleared for positions and roads, and the former migration corridor of Red Book species such as the Persian leopard, bezoar goat and brown bear has become mined and dangerous. Before this, there was almost no human movement in that part of the reserve, and animals roamed freely. Now zoologists see animals with damaged limbs, and the loss of forest raises the risk of soil runoff and landslides, since trees are what hold the soil. The 64-hectare "Plane Grove," the largest natural plane grove in the Caucasus, with more than a thousand 200\u2013250-year-old trees 30\u201335 m tall, is also at risk. Water springs have been lost, and pastures and farmland are degrading or going unused.

The paradox is plain: the country is hosting one of the world's biggest biodiversity forums while its main lake's shore is littered and one of its richest reserves is losing forest and wildlife. A Shikahogh zoologist hopes COP17 will bring more attention, and that foreign guests will see how much biodiversity exists in such a small area. The question is whether that attention will turn into real protection.

Source:
https://hetq.am/hy/article/184980