Does integrated conservation of terrestrial orchids work?

Effective plant conservation involves careful consideration and difficult choices when investing limited resources to conservation programs and policies. The conservation practice must integrate. the understanding of existing and future environmental threats, taxonomic distinctiveness, numbers of individuals in populations, reproductive biology, ex situ propagation and the maintenance of evolutionary processes influencing population distribution patterns. For this to be possible, conservation should involve detailed experimentation directed at continued survival of the species in both an on site (in situ) ecological context and off site (ex situ) laboratory based context (Ramsay & Dixon, 2003). Thus the development of effective conservation strategies, must strike a balance between the need for urgent action to avoid further loss and the search for essential information and understanding of the species or ecosystem to be conserved. The integrated conservation strategy emphasizes the study of interactions among land conservation, biological management, ex situ research and propagation and (re )introduction and habitat restoration (Hopper, 1997). Integrated conservation approaches vary according to different species with their habitats and distribution characteristics; however the basic concept remains the same.