Abstract:
The floristic enumeration of species conducted in Obite Community Protected Area, Etche, Rivers State, highlights the area’s ecological significance by cataloging various plant species, evaluating their conservation status, and identifying strategies to prevent extinction. This study aimed to enumerate plant species of Obite protected area as an avenue for IUCN conservation priority. Ecological methods involving: Braun-Blanquet releve, a hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS – Garmin Dakota 10 model), species authentication, phytosociological analysis and IUCN conservation evaluation status were deployed. Result revealed a tropical rainforest with luxuriant lush floristic condition in diverse transition structure of heterogeneous life-form habit of herbaceous, shrubby and tree species described as low land secondary mosaic vegetation characterized by horizontal distribution in closed and sparse continuum of representative array of plant species in various diversity and abundance. The most dominant family in the order of species richness revealed Euphorbiaceae (n=11species) among the 29 families of 59 general of 72 species. Life-form habit had shrubby habit (n=27species; 35.7%), herbaceous habit (n=11species; 15.28%) and tree habit (n=34species; 47.22%). Phytosociological result is shown in Table 3.1, while the IUCN Red Data List, evaluated four categories of conservation status as presented in Table 3.1. The floristic enumeration of the Obite Community Protected Areas underscores the rich biodiversity present in the region. However, besides other recommendations further ecological studies should be carried out to ascertain the current conservation status of the evaluated categories of IUCN, especially with the species prone to vulnerability and near threatened as a pathway to statutory recognition.