‘The risk of extinction is accelerating’: world’s botanic gardens raise alarm with space to protect endangered plants running out | Conservation

Botanic gardens around the world are failing to preserve the rarest and most threatened species growing in their living collections because they are running out of space, according to research by the University of Cambridge.

Researchers analyzed century-old records from 50 botanical and shrub gardens, collectively growing half a million plants, to find out how the world’s living plant populations have changed since 1921.

The results were published in the journal Nature environment & developmentThis study suggests that the world’s collections have reached peak capacity, while international restrictions on plant collecting are hampering efforts to study and conserve global plant diversity.

Professor Sam Brockington, curator at the University of Cambridge Botanic Garden, who led the research, said: “The botanic gardens are full. We are running out of space and resources. The rate at which plants are listed as threatened is increasing much faster than the rate at which we are able to respond. “The threat of extinction is accelerating and our response is too slow.”

And in 2020, research conducted by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew found just that 40% of the world’s plant species are threatened with extinction As a result of the destruction of the natural world.

Now, botanical gardens around the world are struggling to find space to preserve rare plants and save endangered species. “They can’t all fit,” Brockington said. For example, the University of Cambridge Botanic Garden is home to more than 8,000 species. “This is more than just a tropical country like Vietnam, growing in a very small area of ​​Cambridge.”

However, to help preserve the world’s biodiversity, the garden added half a million seeds of rare or threatened wild plants to its collection last year and acquired several endangered plants from other botanical gardens. This includes the tahini palm, a palm that can reach 18 meters tall, and the torriana pine, one of the rarest pine trees.

Such threatened plants must compete for space in botanical gardens with beautiful, popular—but less endangered—flowers, trees, and landscapes that will attract visitors and inspire people to learn about horticulture and the natural world.

“We’re also trying to grow plants for science collections, so they should be good for science, but they’re also used in learning programs,” Brockington said. “So, even though the botanical gardens are at peak capacity collectively, we are probably allocating about 5-10% of that capacity to conservation.”

Brockington said one solution to creating more capacity could be to build more botanical gardens in the Global South. “The global distribution of botanical gardens does not – and never has – matched all important biodiversity.”

The first botanical gardens were established during the colonial era, and almost all of them were located in the west. In the past, botanists from these gardens would engage in “colonial-type extractive practices,” visiting poor countries “to uproot, bring back and plant any plants they cared about or their rich patrons cared about,” Brockington said.

In 1993, A United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity The United States has tried to stop this by assigning sovereignty over biodiversity to national governments, and enabling states to “own” genetic material within their geopolitical borders.

But Cambridge University research suggests this is hampering botanic gardens’ efforts to collect endangered plants in the wild, and exchange seeds and plant material to protect threatened species from extinction.

To maintain diversity and preserve the world’s living populations, plants must be replaced or propagated regularly. But since the convention was introduced in 1993, the number of plants in botanic gardens collected from the wild has halved, the research found.

“Political borders do not help us share materials and collectively manage the world’s most endangered biodiversity,” Brockington said.

Brexit, for example, has been “disastrous” for the exchange of plant materials between European botanic gardens, he said. “The bureaucracy of seed exchanges can be very expensive now, and it would be cheaper for our staff to personally travel to a place like Sweden, with a legal amount of seeds, rather than mail them.”

The climate emergency also threatens the living collections in the botanical gardens. Botanical gardens are forced to focus on plants that will survive the shift to a new climate in the coming decades.

Brockington wants the world’s botanical gardens to collaborate to protect plant collections by creating one large “descriptive collection,” where individual specimens of endangered wild species are grown on a large scale at multiple institutions.

“The consequences of inaction are that we will lose many more species to extinction than we otherwise would have. Conserving plant diversity could lead to groundbreaking discoveries about food, medicine or materials in the future,” Brockington said. “I fear we will lose this diversity before To understand its value to human society.”