News Published: 9 February 2024

Disasters strike communities around the world, and there is a growing realisation and evidence that their frequency and impact is increasing globally. Garden collections, infrastructures, personnel, and visitors continue to be exposed to manifold hazards, including fires, droughts, storms, floods, pandemics, social unrest, and armed conflict.

Botanic gardens have not been spared the calamitous effects of disasters

At the start of February, the Jardín Botánico Nacional de Viña del Mar in Chile was almost completely destroyed, and four people associated with the garden sadly lost their lives, in the voracious wildfires that have devastated central-southern Chile. Following these tragic events and devastation of the native natural areas, plant collections, greenhouses, research centre, and staff homes of one of our valued members, BGCI is now opening the Disaster Recovery Fund to facilitate international donations directly to the garden to help them rebuild following this tragedy.

Your donation will make a difference

About the garden

With more than 100 years of history the Jardín Botánico Nacional de Viña del Mar, a BGCI member garden, held significant ecological and botanical importance, serving as a refuge to more than 1,300 plant species, some of which were endangered or extinct in the wild, such as collection species from the remote Juán Fernández Islands and Sophora toromiro, native to Rapa Nui Island. The garden was one of the few repositories in the world for these collections, highlighting its global significance.

Support staff to rebuild collections at Jardín Botánico Nacional de Chile and help them get through this time of crisis.

The garden not only saw tragic loss of life of some of its staff in the devastating fire, and most of the collections, but also their income in terms of visitors in the coming months as they begin reconstruction.

The Jardín Botánico Nacional de Chile is a treasure for Chileans and its recovery is crucial to understand, research and conserve plant diversity.

How can your donation make a difference?

BGCI is mobilising funding from the botanical community and beyond to help support the first steps towards the reconstruction of our member garden and to start the development of new collections. All donations to BGCI’s Disaster Recovery Fund in the next two months will be vital for:

• Relocating collections to safer sites
• Rebuilding of shaded area and glass house to hold the conservation and research plant collections which survived the fire
• Purchasing essential materials, equipment, and tools for the garden such as engraving machine for labels
• Rebuilding seed and cutting propagation facilities
• Rebuilding of the small in vitro and DNA histology laboratories.

BGCI will work in close collaboration with the garden staff, the Red Chilena de Jardines Botánicos, and the Red Sudamericana de Jardines Botánicos to offer targeted support.

Botanic garden staff across the world are risking their health and safety to ensure that we have safe places to learn about the world around us and that we do not lose any more of the planet’s incredible plant diversity – more than one third of which is held in botanic garden collections, therefore supporting those who are dedicating their lives to this cause is an important part of BGCI’s work.

For more information on the susceptibility of botanic gardens, and their responses, to disasters please see BGCI’s Technical Review.