Rose Ln
Oxford OX1
UK
Botanic gardens offer the opportunity to conserve and manage a wide range of plant diversity ex situ, and in situ in the broader landscape. The rationale that botanic gardens have a major role to play in preventing plant species extinctions through integrated plant conservation action is based on the following assumptions: a) There is no technical reason why any plant species should become extinct; given the array of ex situ and in situ conservation techniques employed by the botanic garden community (seed banking, cultivation, tissue culture, assisted migration, species recovery, ecological restoration etc.) we should be able to avoid species extinctions; b) As a professional community, botanic gardens possess a unique set of skills that encompass finding, identifying, collecting, conserving and growing plant diversity across the entire taxonomic spectrum
Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) is a membership organization representing a network of 500 botanic gardens in 100 countries, and around 60,000 scientists, horticulturists and educators – the largest plant conservation network in the world. This network already conserves and manages more than 90% of plant families, 50% of genera and 30% of species in its living collections and seed banks. Following the example of the crop conservation community, BGCI’s botanic garden-centred Global System for the conservation and management of plant diversity aims to collect, characterize and conserve all of the world’s rare and threatened plants as an insurance policy against their extinction in the wild and as a source of plant material for human innovation, adaptation and resilience. Using tree conservation as an example, I will set out the approach, methodologies and milestones being employed by botanic gardens and arboreta to ensure that no rare and threatened species becomes extinct.