Abstract
Sacred natural sites, as probably the oldest form of habitat reserve for religious or cultural causes worldwide, are suggested to have an important role in conserving vegetation; however, there are insufficient data supporting the detailed implications of such sites for vegetation conservation. Thus, we evaluated the effectiveness of vegetation conservation on a Tibetan sacred mountain in Yajiang County, Sichuan, China, by investigating species richness and the structural attributes of higher vascular plant communities on and around the sacred mountain from April to June 2009. The results showed that the number of tree species on the sacred mountain was significantly higher than that in the surrounding area, but there were no notable differences in the numbers of shrub and grass species between the two sites. The sacred mountain harbored a greater number of small, short trees compared with the surrounding area, wherein the low-shrub and grass understory was relatively dense. We conclude that the sacred mountain has a positive impact on indigenous vegetation protection, but disparities in the management of the allowed uses of such sites could reduce their conservation effectiveness.
Highlights
There are numerous ethnic groups across the world, which have existed for centuries, for the most part from ancient times (Dudley et al 2005)
We evaluated the effectiveness of vegetation conservation on a Tibetan sacred mountain in western China
By comparing higher vascular plant communities on and surrounding the sacred mountain, we investigated whether species richness and the structural attributes of communities differed between the sacred mountain and the surrounding area
Summary
There are numerous ethnic groups across the world, which have existed for centuries, for the most part from ancient times (Dudley et al 2005) Many such groups define forests or mountains as sacred areas, protecting such regions for religious or cultural reasons, because they believe that everything has a soul, with some areas having resident deities or spirits. Some research has indicated a higher plant diversity in sacred sites compared with open-access sites. Bhagwat et al (2005) found that the overall species richness of trees did not significantly differ among sacred groves, officially protected areas, and coffee plantations in the Western Ghats of India. Given that there are insufficient data supporting the detailed implications of sacred sites for vegetation conservation, more research is required to determine the conservation effectiveness of such sites, especially for poorly known areas (Xu et al 2019)
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