Ch. 10— Maintaining Biological Diversity Internationally • 273 



tance of this area, which has received little at- 

 tention from IBPGR. 



It is not yet clear whether a practical and co- 

 operative division of responsibilities between 

 the two entities can be developed. One approach 

 that has been suggested is to have each entity 

 assume different responsibilities, such as giv- 

 ing IBPGR responsibility for offsite mainte- 

 nance and letting FAO focus on onsite gene- 

 banks. An alternative would be to have IBPGR 

 assume responsibility for technical aspects of 

 germplasm collection and maintenance and 

 give FAO responsibility for legal and political 

 factors (28). 



Botanic gardens and arboretums are increas- 

 ingly viewed as important for conservation of 

 wild plant species. Efforts to establish an in- 

 ternational network of botanic gardens for the 

 purpose of conserving threatened plant species 

 were formalized in an international conference 

 at the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew (United 

 Kingdom] in 1978. lUCN's Species Survival 

 Commission set up a Botanical Gardens Con- 

 servation Coordinating Body (BGCCB). This 

 body, established in 1979, is coordinated by the 

 Threatened Plants Unit of lUCN's Conserva- 

 tion Monitoring Center and now has 136 mem- 

 bers. In addition, the Moscow Botanic Garden 

 coordinates for BGCCB the response of 116 

 gardens in the Soviet Union (51). The function 

 of such a network was reviewed at an lUCN 

 conference in Las Palmas in 1985. Represent- 

 atives of the botanic gardens meetings recom- 

 mended a new conservation secretariat with 

 lUCN support to coordinate their conservation 

 activities and the establishment of a Botanic 

 Garden Conservation Strategy (39). 



Representation of developing nations is poor 

 in BGCCB. The Montevideo Botanic Garden 

 is the only South American member, for exam- 

 ple. Efforts are being made to involve more 

 developing-country institutions and to encour- 

 age twinning arrangements between institu- 

 tions, whereby expertise in seed maintenance, 

 curation, and fund raising could be promoted. 

 Mechanisms to fund such activities, however, 

 are not well established (39). 



The planning of conservation collections by 

 collaborating botanic gardens is encouraged by 

 BGCCB by drawing attention to rare and threat- 

 ened species that are poorly represented or not 

 in cultivation at all. This is done through the 

 provision of reports and an annual computer 

 printout for each member garden, detailing the 

 conservation plans lUCN has been provided 

 by the garden. The printouts allow an analysis 

 of the garden's holdings in relation to other 

 gardens. Members are encouraged to propagate 

 and distribute species that are represented, 

 especially if they are endangered or extinct in 

 the wild. BGCCB also has circulated lists of 

 threatened plants to its members and stores the 

 information on holdings in the CMC database 

 (51). 



lUCN has located 3,948 threatened plant spe- 

 cies in cultivation by members of BGCCB, 

 which is at least one-quarter of the known 

 threatened plants in the CMC computerized 

 database (78). However, these collections con- 

 stitute only a tiny proportion of the genetic 

 range of threatened species. They also repre- 

 sent only a small proportion of the biological 

 diversity maintained by botanic gardens, which 

 implies that greater emphasis on cultivation of 

 rare and threatened species could be under- 

 taken (51). Although it may be theoretically pos- 

 sible for the botanic gardens of the world to 

 grow the estimated 25,000 to 40,000 threatened 

 species of flowering plants, cultivating suffi- 

 cient populations to maintain diversity is un- 

 realistic. Consequently, protecting a diversity 

 of wild species will rest on maintaining them 

 in the wild. 



Animal Diversity 



Just as institutions split offsite maintenance 

 of plants into agricultural and nonagricultural 

 species, offsite maintenance of animals is bro- 

 ken down into categories of domesticated and 

 wild species. The former category has fallen 

 under international agricultural institutions, 

 such as FAO or regional institutions, such as 

 the International Livestock Centre for Africa. 

 Responsibility for offsite maintenance of wild 

 species has been almost exclusively assumed 

 by an international network of zoos. 



