Lagenocarpus compactus

Habitats have been altered by past anthropogenic disturbances (mining, grazing, and burning of savanna) and landscapes have been highly modified. The Chiapada Diamentina has been protected as a national park since 1994. Current threats to plant species in the region include: increased tourism, intensive use of water resources (including the construction of dams) and application of agro-chemicals in surroundings areas, urban expansion and extraction of ornamental native plants. How these threats directly impact this species is unknown.

This species does not benefit from any legal protection. The Chapada Diamantina has large areas of Campo Rupestre and a rich endemic flora. It has been included in the federal system of protected areas since 1994, as a national park (IUCN Category II). The park was created with the intention of protecting beautiful mountain scenery and important water resources, but its boundaries have been drawn within a highly human-modified landscape. The resulting reserve has a very irregular shape, a low area/perimeter ratio, limited core areas, and excludes neighbouring ecosystems. Distances need to be maintained from agricultural fields and ecological corridors created. GIS techniques and extensive field work have allowed the identification of areas for potential corridors, which have high ecological gains for the reserve but low potential for generating serious conflicts with established human populations. Three areas were recommended for incorporation into the Park, and six for off-reserve conservation management (Funch 2007, Funch and Harley 2007). The Chapada Diamantina Foundation work to encourage less environmentally damaging and more sustainable agriculture practices around the park and seek to integrate private use of natural resources with public conservation planning. Other conservation units need to be created to protect Campo Rupestre habitats where there is a high frequency of endemic taxa that are presently headed for extinction (Leme 1998). Since the beginning of the 1990s, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, in collaboration with a large number of institutions and academics, has developed a major research program on the plants of northeast Brazil. The collaborative Project Flora de Bahia initiated in 1998, aims to provide detailed floras of the vascular plants of the region, vegetation maps, lists of endemics and endangered species and to determine priority areas for conservation within the state of Bahia. The Distribution of Campo Rupestre in Brazil has still not been fully mapped. Field surveys and monitoring of the population of this species should be conducted with examination of known, historical and potentially suitable areas to confirm local subpopulations, possibly find new ones, and document if local extinction does occur. The number, size and dynamics of the population should be studied as well as the ecology and biology of the taxon. Natural regeneration studies should be conducted for conservation and management. Seeds should be collected for germplasm and ex situ conservation (Harley 1995, Scarano 2007).