News published: 27 January 2025

For those of you who have not seen the recent study on botanic garden living collections led by Cambridge University Botanic Garden and published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, here is a summary.

Main findings

Researchers analysed a century’s worth of records – from 1921 to 2021 – from fifty botanic gardens and arboreta currently growing half a million accessions, to see how the world’s living plant collections have changed over time.
The authors conclude that there is little evidence that institutions are managing to conserve threatened plants within collections on a global scale, despite accelerating rates of elevated extinction risk. The findings imply that tackling the loss of biodiversity has not been prioritised across the world’s botanic gardens as a collective – in fact, the study shows only a 1% increase in the proportion of threatened plant species in living collections in the past 40 years. Furthermore, the researchers say the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has effectively halved the level at which plants are being collected from the wild (44% reduction since 1993), and also created obstacles to the international exchange of plants (38% reduction since 1993). All of this is happening in the context of institutions whose living collections appear to have collectively reached peak capacity, necessitating some strategic decisions on how to prioritise our use of space and resources.

In short, this study gives us all the evidence we need to confront our responsibilities and challenges head on.

What are we going to do about this shocking state of affairs?

First, and most importantly, we need to take a good look at ourselves. This study points to a collective failure of leadership. A 1% increase in threatened plant species in living collections over the past 40 years is the most shocking statistic of all. Yes, ex situ living collections are only part of what we do in conservation, but they are an essential component, with plant propagation/management knowledge and plant material feeding into ecological restoration and the repair of nature that features so prominently in the CBD’s Global Biodiversity Framework. Moreover, documented living collections are at the heart of what defines a botanic garden. We are also the only professional community that can do this because we grow a much, much wider range of plant diversity than any other sector. So, why isn’t conservation horticulture a priority? I suspect it is because the trade off with ornamental horticulture is too high. But this is not the fault of our horticulturists. It is a leadership failure at the highest levels in our institutions. Sadly, it also reveals our disingenuousness – after all, we have a lot to say about the loss of biodiversity.

BGCI’s International Advisory Council – convened to provide leadership and guidance to our community – will take this study very seriously, and will be tasked with developing a response that sees conservation horticulture fully mainstreamed into the botanical garden community. Amongst other things, as the authors of the paper point out, this will entail the development of a global information ecosystem that empowers botanic gardens to connect, share, and analyse their living collections data, enabling informed, collaborative and collective decisions to manage and safeguard plant diversity. At the heart of such a data ecosystem there will need to be both affordable and free to access living collections management software that is fully compatible with BGCI’s conservation tools and data repositories including PlantSearch and material exchange platforms such as PlantConnect and Index Seminum. We already have blueprints for building global information systems such as the World Flora Online model – a global consortium of institutions, working for the common good, to deliver a stable plant taxonomy. In learning from these we will not be starting to build a solution from scratch.

Secondly, the negative impacts of access legislation and permitting regulations by the parties to the CBD will come as a surprise to nobody who has ever attempted to apply for permits for plant collecting or to exchange material internationally. The intention of the CBD was never to impede conservation efforts, but the failure to differentiate between people trying to conserve biodiversity and those trying to exploit it, has led to the current situation in which the biodiversity conservation community is impeded or excluded from access to the plants we are trying to save. What makes it worse (see BGCI’s illegal trade campaign) is that companies and individuals accessing threatened plant diversity illegally seem to do so with impunity. We need the nations who have signed up to the CBD to work smarter and more flexibly, facilitating access to those organisations and institutions who are willing and able to help reverse the decline of biodiversity. A BGCI delegation will be visiting the CBD Secretariat in Montreal in March to initiate discussions about how we might do this.

Rather than see this paper as a threat to the reputation of botanic gardens, we need to see it as an opportunity.

As the paper points out, we already have clear examples of successful ex situ conservation programmes from within our own community, including the International Conifer Conservation Programme and other Global Conservation Consortia. We now have all the evidence we need to make long overdue changes, and I would like to congratulate the authors for having the courage to publish these uncomfortable truths.

Dr. Paul Smith, BGCI Secretary General – January 2025