National botanical garden to focus on conservation

China unveiled its first national botanical garden on Monday in Beijing, aiming to conserve the country's biodiversity and serve as a Noah's Ark to preserve endangered plant species, according to the National Forestry and Grassland Administration.

The administration said that the garden will focus on the off-site conservation of plants, collecting more than 5 million typical plant specimens from five continents and 30,000 living species for conservation, research and demonstration.

Off-site conservation involves the transfer of threatened species, endemic species or those with vital economic value from their native habitats to a safe place, such as a botanical garden or a seed bank, to ensure their survival.

The garden, covering around 600 hectares, has two major parts that are operated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Botany and the Beijing municipal government.

The administration and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development will guide the garden's operation.

In October, during a keynote speech via video link at the leaders' summit of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, President Xi Jinping said that China has started building a national botanical garden system in places including Beijing and Guangzhou, Guangdong province, following the principle of striking a balance between on-site and off-site conservation.

The national botanical garden system will set up more such gardens to achieve the goal of off-site preservation of more than 85 percent of the nation's wild native plants and all the wild plant species on key protection lists, the administration said.

In December, the State Council, China's Cabinet, announced the approval of the garden's establishment in the nation's capital.

Zhou Zhihua, deputy head of the administration's wildlife conservation department, said: "The genetic resources that wild plants carry matter to national biosecurity. However, over-exploitation, climate change and invasion of alien species have caused some wild plants to face extinction.

"Off-site conservation through the national botanical garden system can reduce plants' extinction risks caused by natural disasters and extreme weather events in their native habitats," she added.

Wang Xiaoquan, head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Botany, said that the garden's rich collection of species will lay a good foundation for scientific research on plants.

"Without such scientific research, we will not understand rare and endangered plants or formulate reasonable protection measures," he said.

Wang added that with its leading scientific research strength and off-site protection capability, Beijing holds an advantage for a national botanical garden to display the country's highest-level plant conservation and research abilities.