A New CPC Book: An Update of “Ex Situ Conservation”

A team of CPC members from Chicago Botanic Garden, National Tropical Botanical Garden and Manchester Metropolitan University have begun work on a new edited volume that would serve as an update to the 2004 Ex Situ Conservation by Guerrant, Havens and Maunder. We will present the vision for this volume and invite attendees to review, discuss, and potentially contribute if desired.

We envision starting the volume with a summary chapter by Guerrant, Havens, and Maunder, editors of the first volume, summarizing some of the major changes they have seen over the past 25 years. This would be followed by a series of “why” chapters; why ex situ techniques are needed for different groups of plants, and expanding their use beyond the world’s rarest plants to species needed for large-scale restoration and for culturally important species. We would then discuss the “hows”; how to use the suite of ex situ techniques, from the banking of seed, pollen and spore to living collection management. New content will focus on how we adopt conservation methods from outside the botanical community, advances in pollen banking, cryobiology and sampling with drones, and progress in living collection management and metacollections. The last section would cover guidance for using ex situ techniques most effectively, touching on topics like ethical and legal considerations, global partnerships, and data sharing, as well as updated guidance on how to make a genetically adequate collection of seeds or plants.