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In the famed tropical greenhouses of the world’s largest botanic garden.
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Conservation worldwide
For mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians,
the standard form of ex-situ conservation is in zoological parks. There are currently
an estimated 500,000 living creatures in zoos worldwide. Some species such as the
Californian condor now only exist in zoos. Others such as Przewalski’s horse and
the Pere David deer have only survived because they were protected in zoos. They
are now being released back into the wild.
The main forms of ex situ plant conservation are botanic gardens (for whole specimens)
and germplasm and seed banks. Botanical Gardens International, a non-governmental
organization, estimates there are 1,500 botanic gardens worldwide, containing at
least 35,000 species, over 15 per cent of the world’s total. Some put the estimate
as high as 70,000 to 80,000 species.
Most botanic gardens are in the industrialized nations (only 230 are in tropical
countries, despite their greater plant diversity). Many seed and germplasm banks
are linked directly to botanical collections. Others are owned by multinational corporations,
which use them as source material for developing new plant varieties. One survey
found that 88 per cent of plant-breeding companies keep their own store of genetic
resources.
A third major source of seed and germplasm samples are university departments and
the research institutes forming the Consultative Group on International Agricultural
Research, funded through the World Bank.
A guide to zoos
worldwide:
www.mindspring.com/~zoonet
www_virtual_lib/zoos.html
A complete list of arboreta and botanical
gardens can be found on: www.helsinki.fi/kmus/
botgard.html
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At the hub of the British
Empire, Kew Gardens once scoured the world for plants. Now its Millennium Seed Bank
puts it in the vanguard of international conservation efforts
 For thousands of Londoners,
the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew are best known as a favourite picnic spot on the
edge of the city, famous for their picturesque Palm House and Chinese pagoda, their
unrivalled collection of plants and their extensive, highly manicured lawns.
The novelty of the gardens, when they were established in the 18th century, was the
way in which they combined the function of cultivating a wide variety of plants with
an aesthetically pleasing landscape, a sharp contrast to the formality of the plant
collections that preceded them.
This remains their charm today. Visitors can wander through a selection of carefully
selected and individually labelled trees, and shrubs and flowering plants from all
over the world. These range from massive rhododendendron bushes from China, tropical
palms grown in a spectacular Victorian glass-house, to the smallest alpine flowers
in a specially-built rock garden.
Kew played an influential role at the heart of the British Empire in the 19th century,
when it acted as a central clearing house for trees and other plants discovered in
one part of the empire that could be productively, and often profitably, grown in
another. By the end of the 19th century, Kew was receiving over 2,500 packets of
seeds a year from around the world, and exporting more than 3,500. One curator wrote
that as a result of Kew’s 19th-century activities the world had been “pretty well
ransacked.”
Biopiracy
in an imperial light
It was as a
result of Kew’s efforts, for example, that rubber plants from South America were
transferred to highly productive environments in Southeast Asia. Less controversially,
Kew officials also arranged for the transfer of cinchona, source of the anti-malarial
drug quinine, from its native Andes to malaria-ridden areas of Asia. “In the mid-19th
century such activities reflected the then global superpower encouraging the use
of plant resources,” says Kew’s director, Peter Crane. “Today they would be seen
as pure biopiracy.”
Although Kew’s imperial role ended with the collapse of the empire early in the 20th
century, it continued to play a major role as a research institution, preserving
and cataloguing plants from across the world.
But it was only in the final decades of the century that concern for the preservation
of biodiversity placed Kew back at the centre of the political stage as one of the
focal points of global ex situ efforts to preserve the planet’s biodiversity.
In an ideal world, all living organisms would be preserved in their natural habitat—a
strategy known as in situ conservation. But a variety of factors, from the needs
of researchers for easy access to the fact that many plants and animals are threatened
with extinction in the wild, have led to the growth of ex situ strategies.
Perhaps the clearest evidence of Kew’s new role in supporting global conservation
efforts is the Millennium Seed Bank currently under construction at its outstation
at Wakehurst Place, a 200-hectare estate in West Sussex. When completed later this
year, it will be the largest in the world dedicated to conserving the seeds of world
plants. Its long-term aim is to collect and conserve 10 per cent of the world’s seed-bearing
flora (about 24,000 species) mainly from arid drylands by the year 2010.
The bank will make seeds available both for research purposes and for reintroduction
into the wild. In Britain, seeds of the starfruit, a small white flower that has
almost died out were collected and stored at Wakehurst and samples sent to Kew for
DNA fingerprinting. Plants grown successfully from the seeds are now being reintroduced
in their natural habitat.
Roger Smith, head of Kew’s seed conservation department, says that one of the goals
of the seed bank initiative is to achieve Britain’s conservation obligations as signatories
to the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) “in a way that reduces countries’
learning curve involved in setting up their own collections and allows them to have
the insurance policy of seed collections under our control.”
The CBD requires anyone taking plant samples out of a country to enter a formal agreement
specifying the conditions under which this is being done, and in particular the compensation
that a country can expect to receive if a commercial application is eventually developed
from the plant.
Informed
consent
This compensation
could, for example, take the form of an agreed share of the royalties resulting from
the licensing of a patent based on the plant’s genetic properties. A hypothetical
case might be that of a plant discovered in the Amazon shown to have powerful anti-cancer
properties. Particularly in light of their previous reputation, Kew researchers are
keen to be seen to meet CBD requirements.
Agreements are currently being negotiated with countries around the world on the
conditions under which seed specimens can be collected and added to the bank. Nations
that have already signed up include Mexico, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, Venezuela,
Morocco, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Often this means reaching agreement on creating
two parallel collections. One is located in the country concerned. The second, “back-up”
collection will be held at Wakehurst Park while remaining accessible on request to
the depositing country.
Smith says that the need for a binding agreement on what Kew can do with the seeds
that it stores can cause problems, for example when a country lacks any formal mechanism
for providing the “prior informed consent” for obtaining data on its plants as required
under the CBD.
The same desire to use Kew’s knowledge and experience is reflected in a separate
initiative to harmonize procedures for access to seed and germplasm collections around
the world.
As a result of this initiative, representatives of 14 botanic gardens in 11 countries
agreed at a meeting in Beijing last year to adopt a common set of policy guidelines
setting out their commitments on acquiring and conserving genetic resources, on the
use and supply of such resources, and on the sharing of benefits arising from their
use, for example by commercial organizations.
The new priorities that make up Kew’s current agenda are very different from those
which determined its influence a hundred years ago. “The last thing we want is to
be accused of being biopirates,” says Smith. “We must not deny that we ever did it.
But we must acknowledge that that world has gone.”
The Royal Botanic and Millennium Seed Bank: www.rbgkew.org.uk
Common Policy Guidelines for botanic gardens: www.rbg.ca/cbcn/cpg.index.html
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The recognition of the fact
that the wildlife of the world is irreplaceable but is being rapidly destroyed is
necessary if we are to realize in time that areas must be set aside where, in the
ultimate interests of mankind as a whole, the spread of man must take second place
to the conservation of other species.
Julian
Huxley, British biologist, first director-general of UNESCO (1887-1975)
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