Today we are losing plant diversity at an unprecedented rate leading to a concerning decrease in the ecosystem, this is mainly a result of destructive human activities. Humans are the primary contributors to the destruction of the ecosystem because of engaging in vicious activities without being honest with their environmental concerns, some of these destructive activities include but not limited to include urbanization, poor forestry practices, over-harvesting, land-use changes, global environmental changes and use of exotic species. There are a variety of roles plants plays to contribute to our healthy and comfortable living, plants are our main source of nutrients, oxygen, medicine and home to millions of animal species, therefore, we need to develop an integrative conservation approach that ensures we protect and maintain them especially the endangered plant species. Given the importance of plants to humans and high risks of some species becoming extinct both public and private institutions have stepped up their conservation measures which have contributed to the emergence of many botanic conservation gardens, these gardens play a key role in the protection of endangered plant species, provide data for scientific research, promote awareness and also of human purposes. Botanic gardens are playing a significant role in changing the world in a variety of ways, to learn more about them continue reading this article.
One of the reasons for having plant botanical gardens is to increase the world plant species biodiversity in an attempt to counter the plant cover lose that is contributed by vicious human activities and climate change, today there are over 2500 botanical gardens with over 6 million accessions of living plant, this is equivalent to a quarter of the world plant species which contribute greatly to the conservation of endangered species and diversification of plant species.
Plant botanical gardens play a key role in scientific research, for example, scientists can collect valuable plant data that can help them study plant-animal interactions, phonological indications due to climate change, plant physiology among other vital information that can help improve plant species or design new reliable methods of growing plants. Another benefit of plant botanic conservation is that it has a variety of plant species that allow scientists to compare a variety of plant functional characteristics such as trade-offs between species traits and plant performance.
The vital role of plant botanic conservation is in the understanding of the threatened plant species, this is made possible by the huge presence of plant species in the botanic garden, botanic garden conservation contribute to the protection, maintenance, and support of threatened plant species mainly through ex-situ conservation which is mainly conservation of biological diversity from their natural habitat. Those are some of the main reasons why botanical gardens are emerging today, other important reasons include the desire to spread awareness to the public about threatened plant species and the importance of protecting the earth’s plant covers.