Armenia has established two new protected areas that will not only help globally threatened species, but will also protect water resources, provide job opportunities and potentially nurture transboundary cooperation in a region rife with political tension.

Both parks-Arevik National Park and Zangezur Sanctuary-are in the southernmost region of Armenia, and Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) grant recipients worked toward their declaration as protected areas.

"Southern Armenia is one of the key priority conservation areas in the Caucasus," said Nugzar Zazanashvili, conservation director of the WWF Caucasus Program. He added that the creation of these protected areas creates a strong basis for developing an ecological network in the South Caucasus.

Arevik National Park, at about 34,000 hectares, is on Armenia's borders with Iran and Azerbaijan. It encompasses broad-leaf forest, Juniper open woodlands, subalpine and alpine meadows, semidesert and mountain steppes. Caucasian leopards, vulnerable Bezoar goats, brown bears, lynx and wild cats are among its residents, as well as more than 1,500 species of vascular plants.

The 17,368-hectare Zangezur Sanctuary is on the border with Azerbaijan. Grantee Khustup Nature Protection NGO helped the government with management planning for the protected area. The park is important as not only as home to the Armenian mouflon, which number only about 200-250 in the wild in Armenia, but also as host to four high mountain lakes that serve as fresh water reservoirs. A variety of other rare and endemic flora and fauna can be found there as well.

With the declaration of these parks, the total of new protected areas achieved in the Caucasus Hotspot in part through the efforts of CEPF grantees grew to 70,000 hectares, with another 160,000 hectares in the pipeline.

Another CEPF grantee, the Fund for Biodiversity Conservation of the Armenian Highland, provided financial support to the villages surrounding these areas to launch new, sustainable sources of income, such as bee-keeping, pomegranate processing and tourism development.

The surrounding communities also stand to benefit from the establishment of the parks. "Establishment of the two protected areas in the most remote part of Armenia will contribute to stabilization of livelihoods for local people of the southernmost region through development of tourism/ecotourism, creation of new job opportunities and creation of transboundary collaboration," said Karen Manvelyan, the national coordinator for CEPF's investment in Armenia.

The location of these new protected areas also provides new opportunities for cooperation and the easing of tensions between Armenia and its neighbors. Both Arevik and Zangezur border or are very close to Ordubad National Park in Azerbaijan, and Arevik borders the Kiamaky protected area in Iran.