A growing number of plant species are going extinct because of climate change, posing a serious threat to the planet. Once they are gone, they are lost forever — or maybe not.
A Taiwanese nongovernmental organization, the Dr Cecilia Koo Botanic Conservation Center (KBCC), is combating this trend through its dedication to conserving plants, hoping ultimately to reintroduce endangered species into nature.
The KBCC has collected 33,309 plant species, mostly tropical and subtropical, making it the world’s largest plant repository in term of varieties, said Li Chia-wei (李家維), who heads the Pingtung County-based plant shelter.
Photo: CNA
England’s Royal Botanic Gardens has about 18,000 species, the US’ Missouri Botanical Garden has 17,500 and China’s Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden has 13,000, Li said.
The KBCC keeps live species instead of storing seeds in a controlled environment like other conservation programs, such as England’s Millennium Seed Bank Project.
The center said its approach gives endangered plants the chance to proliferate, making it more likely that they can be recultivated in their original environment.
Among the KBCC’s collection are plant species endemic to Taiwan, such as the critically endangered Lithocarpus formosanus and Rhododendron kanehirai, which is extinct in the wild, according to the center’s database.
The collection also includes several critically endangered plants found on Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼), such as the Endiandra coriacea, Polyalthia liukiuensis and Pinanga tashiroi.
This Noah’s Ark of flora has focused mainly on supporting local plant conservation efforts and serving as a model for similar undertakings worldwide.
The KBCC has also played a role in advancing plant preservation efforts in other countries, including the Solomon Islands, known for its rich and diverse flora.
In 2013, the center teamed up with Taiwan’s International Cooperation and Development Fund, a government-funded agency involved in foreign agricultural aid programs, to help the Solomon Islands inventory and conserve its plant resources, Li said.
The challenges in store for the project were evident as soon as the team arrived in the country, Li said, citing as an example the need bring materials from Taiwan to construct a greenhouse so that living plants could be conserved.
However, the project’s importance was obvious during its five-year run, as native plant species were threatened by logging and the clearing of land for cash crops such as palm oil and cocoa.
“The logging business in the Solomon Islands is mainly run by Chinese, so most of the logs are shipped there,” Li said, adding that some were also destined for Taiwan.
The survey team, comprised of botany experts, archived 5,000 specimens of different plants, including a variety of orchids and other wild vascular plants that had never been identified before, he said.
The team also staged workshops and set up modern equipment at the government-run National Herbarium and Botanical Gardens, as well as helping to publish an illustrated survey of Solomon Islands flora to give the country a sound foundation for further conservation and sustainability.
“Plant conservation knows no boundaries,” Li said.
In 2016, the team tried to duplicate its success in Sao Tome and Principe, also renowned for a rich ecosystem, but the naton later broke diplomatic ties with Taiwan and the project was suspended, Li said.
However, before that incident, the team retrieved a native Begonia specimen that was on the verge of extinction, he added.
That acquisition was notable, given that the KBCC has always aspired to be a Noah’s Ark of tropical and subtropical plants, a vision that Li shared with Leslie Koo (辜成允), sponsor of the center and chairman of Taiwan Cement Corp, who died aged 62 of head injuries.
The shelter idea was conceived in 2006, during a chat with Koo, Li said, adding that Koo quickly agreed to become its sponsor.
Koo donated land to the project and the center, named after Koo’s mother, now has eight greenhouses spread over two hectares.
Li stressed that he would always be grateful to his friend for these contributions.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching