Plant conservation in protected areas in Vietnam: an analysis from the Threatened Species Lists

Abstract

In order to guide national conservation policies, lists of nationally threatened plant species are a useful tool. To facilitate the national biodiversity commitments, Vietnam published a conservation management guide. We evaluated the application of these guidelines, focusing on the conservation programs within protected areas across the country. We sent a survey to management offices of 32 protected areas to assess the extent to which the threatened plant species lists have been used in official conservation efforts. We found that the IUCN Red List, the Vietnam Red Data Book and the national decrees are the principal guidelines for conservation prioritization. Besides describing characteristics of conservation programs for threatened plant species, we discovered that the species selected for the programs did not always adhere to the guidelines but showed more or less a rule of thumb in selecting species from lists. We highlight that this is not necessarily a bad implementation if taking into account the shortage of finance and maximizing the number of protected species. Thus, to enhance the utility of the lists for the conservation of threatened plant species, we advise users to recognize that the lists are not always updated, and to employ them as a reasonable reference rather than as the sole guideline.