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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8. The Canadian University Biodiversity Consortium and a new biodiversity center at the Montréal Botanical Garden, Anne Bruneau, Institut de recherche en biologie végétale, Université de Montréal

Stuart Hay, Assistant curator of the Marie-Victorin Herbarium Photo: The Montréal Botanical Garden

The Canadian University Biodiversity Consortium is a partnership headed by the Université de Montréal, in collaboration with the universities of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Toronto, Guelph, York, McGill, Laval, Acadia and Memorial, the Montreal Botanical Garden, University of British Columbia Botanical Garden, Devonian Botanical Garden, Harriet Irving Botanical Garden, Memorial University Botanical Garden and the Royal Ontario Museum. The Consortium was recently funded by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation programme to a total of 16 million dollars. This Consortium unites Canadian researchers from multiple disciplines, renowned for their expertise in a diversity of taxonomic groups, tools and approaches. The project focuses on three of the most diverse, and ecologically and economically important groups of organisms: plants, insects and fungi, the latter two representing some of the most poorly understood and inventoried organisms world-wide. The consortium has three principal objectives:

1. The Consortium will develop a web-based querying system that links collections databases from across Canada. Following the model proposed by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (http://www.gbif.org/), this cyber-infrastructure will allow users the possibility of querying, retrieving and displaying biodiversity data recovered from museum and botanical garden collections across the country. Biological collections are replete with geospatial, temporal, numerical and historical information that can be used for determining species and ecosystem-level responses to climate change and other environmental disturbances, to biological invasions, and to agricultural and forestry practices. This information is crucial for the understanding and proper management of biodiversity.
2. The Consortium will develop a laboratory facility for the isolation, characterisation and conservation of biological samples. Rapid and effective preparation of large numbers of samples, high-throughput robotic DNA extraction, and genetic and microscopic characterisation will be used for fast and economic processing of thousands of environmental samples needed, for instance, in studies of micro-fungal species. This facility will be used to study and discover new species, to characterise variability within known species, and to identify isolates of high environmental significance or of biotechnological interest. This new laboratory will be available for use by all partner institutions and their collaborators.
3. Another major goal of the Consortium is to ensure long-term conservation of museological collections at universities across Canada. A new building, to be located at the Montreal Botanical Garden, will house the Marie-Victorin Herbarium (950,000 specimens), the Ouellet-Robert entomological collection (1,000,000 specimens), the Insectarium entomological collections (165,000 specimens), and the mycological collection of the Cercle des Mycologues de Montréal (4,000 specimens), as well as the high throughput laboratory facility and the main server for the cyber-infrastructure.

Long-term conservation will be ensured in temperature- and humidity-controlled museological conditions appropriate for the collections. Associated with well-known public institutions, which each year host millions of visitors, the value of these collections will be highlighted through dynamic scientific exhibitions illustrating the importance of collections and of biodiversity studies. The Consortium has an important role in public awareness of biodiversity, in instilling in youths a respect for the environment, and in promoting the natural wealth within Canada.

By creating a network of excellence and expertise on plant, insect and fungal systematics and biodiversity, this Consortium represents an important national effort to face the challenge of decline in taxonomic expertise and the need for rapid identification and organisation of biodiversity data. The project will also speed up the discovery of the innumerable still-unknown species of the Canadian biota, and help establish and promote the best means for a sustainable use of this natural wealth. This Consortium will be important in inventorying, understanding and protecting biodiversity.