1. A note from CBCN Executive Director
2. Message from Ahmed Djoghlaf
3. Plant conservation in a changing world
4. Preparing to Launch the North American Botanic Gardens Conservation Strategy
5. Biodiversity, climate change, and cultural diversity
6. The urgent need for biodiversity information
7. Adapting to a Changing World
8. The Canadian University Biodiversity Consortium and a new biodiversity center at the Montréal Botanical Garden
9. Stopping the Green Invasion! Memorial University of Newfoundland Botanical Garden Takes Aim at Invasive Alien Species
10. What's Coming Up at CITES CoP 14
11. Letter from Wuhan: A report on the Third Global Botanic Gardens Congress
12. The Montréal Botanical Garden Formally Reinforces its Commitment to Biodiversity Conservation, and hosts a Wollemi Pine
13. Meeting of the Canadian Pollination Protection Initiative
14. Summer is around the corner. Make it count!
15. First Sustainability Camp: a Success
16. Earth Day Celebration at UBC Botanical Garden

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4. Preparing to Launch the North American Botanic Gardens Conservation Strategy, David Galbraith, Royal Botanical Gardens

There has been an almost continuous effort since 2000 to link the missions and programs of botanical gardens around the world with international movements like the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity, and the more recent Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. The newest publication in this effort is being published this summer and is called the North American Botanic Gardens Conservation Strategy.

The North American strategy has been produced by a group of cooperating networks and institutions, including the American Public Gardens Association, CBCN, the Mexican Botanic Gardens Association, and the US Center for Plant Conservation. Leadership for the project to produce the strategy, and funding for its printing, has come from Botanic Gardens Conservation International, and especially from BCGI-US, based at Brooklyn Botanical Garden.

This publication includes a list of targets for the botanical gardens community in North America as a whole. It was developed in large part as a result of the global targets for botanic gardens in conservation developed at the Second Global Botanic Gardens Congress in Barcelona, Spain in 2004, and subsequently published by BGCI. The global targets in turn are linked to both the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, or GSPC, and the International Agenda for Botanic Gardens in Conservation. The global botanic gardens targets are a subset of the 16 targets of the GSPC, broken out as appropriate specifically for the botanical gardens community. The global targets were also linked to the International Agenda by being adopted as a protocol to the agenda at the Barcelona congress.

A detailed action plan incorporating these targets in Canada has already been published. In 2006, BGCI, RBG and CBCN published Conserving Plant Diversity: The 2010 Challenge for Botanic Gardens in Canada, an update to the 2001 Biodiversity Action Plan for Botanical Gardens and Arboreta in Canada. The 2006 action plan update distils the various recommendations of the International Agenda, the GSPC and the global and North American targets into fewer than 24 actions. The primary goal of CBCN is to complete the actions listed in the 2006 plan.

The North American Botanic Gardens Conservation Strategy is being published by BGCI in English, French and Spanish this year. Contact me for more information. Copies of the strategy will be circulated to CBCN members and other institutions in May.