Kriteria penentuan spesies prioritas Rhododendron spp. terancam kepunahan untuk dikonservasi secara ex situ di Indonesia

There are some limitation on achieving ex situ conservation goals such as time, budget, human resources, and policies. A process on the selection of species or location become a problematical course, especially when planning a botanical expedition. This is because we should consider several factors such as conservation status, budget, information, and risk of grow success. In this paper, a simple set of decision frame to prioritize what plant species to conserve on ex situ collection will be discussed. Thirty species of native threatened Rhododendron were scored using 11 criteria, which are conservation status, success story of ex situ introduction, representation of unique taxon, habitat status on biodiversity hot spot, habitat status on global 200 ecoregion, in situ conservation, growth form, habitat elevation, distance between wild habitat and ex situ habitat, number of sympatric congeneric threatened species, and collecting cost. An interpretation of total score judged by the ranking system. Based on these methods, three species of Indonesia native Rhododendron such as R. longiflorum var. bancanum, R. wilhelminae, and R. album become a top priority for ex situ conservation in Cibodas Botanic Garden.