The Dracula orchids, beloved online for their striking primate-like blooms, are facing a conservation crisis. A new global IUCN assessment — the first of its kind — has evaluated all 133 known Dracula species and found that nearly seven in ten are threatened with extinction. Many survive only in tiny forest fragments, some in just one or two locations worldwide.
Deforestation, agriculture, illegal mining, and flower collectors are driving their decline in the Andean cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador. Conservationists are urging community-based monitoring, sustainable land use, and eco-tourism as key strategies to protect what remains.
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Photo credit: Kilitz Photography, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
