Goravan Sands Sanctuary
Coordinates: 44°43′50″N 39°53′40″E / 44.73069°N 39.89433°E Goravan Sands Sanctuary, is a state protected area in Ararat Province, Armenia.
The Goravan Sands Sanctuary is a protected nature area within the Ararat Province of the Republic of Armenia. The reservation was established by the government of the former Armenian Soviet Republlic in 1959 in order to protect the unique flora and fauna of the largest (about 200 ha) known residual of sandy semideserts in Armenia. This reservation is a home for about 160 species of vascular plants, at least 36 species of vertebrate animals (Tadevosyan, 2001, 2002), as well as numerous lower plants, fungy, lichenes, and invertebrates which were not summarized in the literature yet. The reservation supports a number of plant and animal species included into the Red List of Armenia, as well as 4 species included into the 2011 edition of the IUCN Red List. Conservation regimen of the reservation has many similarities to those of IVth of the IUCN Protected Area Management Categories. This means that the area being generally open to recreational and educational use, should be well controlled in order to prevent and manage landscape and habitat changing activities including melioration, reclamation and mining, as well as abuse of natural resources including flora and fauna or their certain representatives through overgrazing and over-collection of eatable wild plants, etc. However, expert surveys performed in 1998-2008 (Tadevosyan, 2001-2006) show that due to the lack of control and even a formal administration, the land of the reservation was intensively used in very different ways including grazing (whole area), sand and travertine mining (few spots), dumping (several spots), military trainings using numerous heavy vehicles (few spots), agriculture (few spots) and uncontrolled and often illegal collection of wild plants and animals including rare and endangered species. The reservation is listed as an area of National Priority in "Biodiversity of Caucasus Ecoregion (2001), as well as in the WWF's list of Caucasus Biodiversity Hotspots. Therefore, there is a hope that changes still can be made in order to save this unique residual ecosystem.
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