Tulipa regelii

This species is threatened by livestock overgrazing with increasing populations of livestock and poor pasture management leading to large areas of habitat becoming overgrazed. In addition, disturbance from recreational activities is also damaging subpopulation numbers and development of infrastructure related to this can further still affect this species especially in the park areas this species occurs in. In these parks the plant is not picked by tourists, but some specialist collectors do take specimens for their personal collections as this is a particularly difficult plant to cultivate and so it is not often found in nurseries. Expansion of nearby reservoirs could also lead to a significant loss of habitat area and the disappearance of some subpopulations.

Climate change may also impact this species as it is predicted to cause declines in the extent of tulip habitat as well as causing shifting habitat which subpopulations of tulips will be forced to track most likely relocating to higher altitudes (Wilson et al. 2021). Regardless the impact on this specific species remains uncertain. Finally earthquakes do occur in this region, which could cause rapid declines in the population especially when combined with these other threats.

This species is recognised as Threatened in the Kazakh Red Book and therefore cannot be collected from the wild (Baitulin 2014), although this likely still occurs. This species does not appear to occur in any protected areas. This plant is known from six ex situ collections (BGCI 2022), but as this species is hard to cultivate it is important it is protected in situ.