Today, 17 percent of New England's native plant species are on the brink of being lost-and another 5 percent have already disappeared from the region. Seed banking is one critical strategy for conserving at-risk plant species. We aim to secure seeds from at least 2,000 of the 3,300 populations of these rare plants, which will enable us to preserve the range of genetic diversity and each species' ability to adapt to changing conditions.
In New England, rare plant species have lost, on average, 67 percent of their known range and face a combination of 5 threats, from invasive species to habitat conversion to climate change. We must take action to save the most imperiled plants.
Seed banking is one critical strategy for conserving at-risk plant species. Over the next five years our goal is to collect and preserve seeds of the 387 globally and regionally rare species in New England, of which 10 occur nowhere else in the world. We aim to secure seeds from at least 2,000 of the 3,300 populations of these rare plants, which will enable us to preserve the range of genetic diversity and each species' ability to adapt to changing conditions.
Our goal is to preserve seed from all of the region's threatened species by 2020, which is the target date established by the Convention on Biological Diversity in its "Global Strategy for Plant Conservation." This will enable the preservation of genetic diversity and elongate the lifespan of rare species.
This project has provided additional documentation in a XLSX file (projdoc.xlsx).
