Ex-situ conservation in the Botanical Garden

Ex situ or in situ?

How to conserve biodiversity? When natural habitats disappear, the Noah Principle offers often the last resort – plants are saved in a Botanical Garden or at least their seeds are stored. This approach is termed conservation ex-situ.  However, this can only be a rescue strategy, since a species will adapt to life in the Botanical Garden and therefore will change. Sustainable species conservations requires to protect natural habitats, such that a species can evolve at its natural site (in-situ conservation). Evolution always proceeds, a species is different from an object that can be shown on display in a museum, it is rather a continuous flow that never stops.

The Botanical Garden of the KIT has been actively supporting species conservation over many years. For highly endangered species such as the Wild European Grape or the Wild Celery that exist in the wild only in very few sites (sometimes only in one), the garden is used for the Noah Principle. For more than 30 species, which are presented on these pages, we cultivate their last individuals, propagate them and often resettle them in favourite sites in the wild. This happens in close cooperation with the Regierungspräsidium Karlsruhe in frame of the Species Conservation Protection Programme of the State of Baden-Württemberg.

See also the Website of the work group „ex-situ conservation of wild plants" of the German Association of Botanical Gardens.