28/03/14 - Plant Conservation in the UK Overseas Territories

Like most people, the word plant in any lecture title used to make me groan and settle in for a boring hour. However, I've become a lot more interested in botanical ID and conservation recently, so this lecture promised to be very informative!

Surprisingly the lecture theatre was packed! The demographic seemed slightly older and greyer haired than normal, but the excitement in the room was palpable. I recognised a lot of the people as Treborth regulars, either as Friends of Treborth, or regular volunteers. This was unsurprising considering who the speaker was.

Colin Clubbe works at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens and is the head of the UK Overseas Territories and Conservation Training Scheme. http://www.kew.org/science-conservation/research-data/science-directory/people/clubbe-colin-p gives a brief summary of his credentials and published papers.

Colin Clubbe - A true field biologist!

There are 16 UK overseas territories (UKOT) that are arguably the site of the UK's most important plant species. The diversity of island endemics is astounding, and some unique communities and habitats cannot be found anywhere else in the world - for example the dwarf shrub heath (Falklands) and cloud forest (St Helena). Kew has a detailed plan to protect and preserve the biodiversity of these former colonies.

UKOT map [http://herbaria.plants.ox.ac.uk/bol/UKOT]
Click to enlarge

With the rising human population and increasing ease of international travel, a lot of these plants are under threat. Developments often fragment habitats and invasive species are often allowed to enter the countries through various transport links. It is these problems that Colin Clubbe and the Kew team are trying to address and combat.

Climate change is also becoming a threat. Many of these UKOTs are incredibly low lying - the British Indian Ocean Territory barely exceeds 2m above sea level. Climate change is bringing more regular, more intense hurricanes which cause storm surges. These often flood the low lying UKOTs, submerging the fauna in salt water. Most of the plants are adapted to be salt tolerant, but cannot cope with long periods of salt submergence. These plants and islands are also highly threatened by the rising sea levels. It is therefore imperative that these imminently threatened species are examined, catalogued and protected before they are lost forever. This is where Colin and his team come in.

His job is to organise the training of locals to implement plant conservation plans, and also to ID and catalogue all the species within the territories. The team are also digitising the entire UKOT herbarium collection in an attempt the standardise the nomenclature, and make the specimens far more readily available. The digitised records are all being made available through the UKOTs Online Herbarium.

This work also contributes to The Plant List which is aiming to catalogue all known world plant species. This task is immense but highly important if unknown specimens are to be easily identified, and accurate naming and distributions to be established.

Kew's work in the UKOTs also aims to train locals in plant ID and help create accurate distribution maps of all the important species there. This is essential if policies are to be created to protect threatened species, or remove invasive species. They also map key habitats and catalogue what the species composition of these are. This process was done across Montserrat and the results helped aid legislation decisions on where developments could or could not be made.

Cataloguing work like this has also helped get invasive species protocols implemented. A 2009 study of the invasive species on South Georgia has helped inform decisions on how best to control the established invasives, and reduce the chance of more colonising the island.

Kew are also making efforts to protect and preserve as many of the species in the UKOTs as possible. They are continually adding seeds to the Millenium seed bank and producing horticultural protocols to aid germination and propagation of these seeds when necessary.

Overall this talk was just as interesting as it promised to be. There wasn't much on specific plant ID, but was concentrated more on the work that the UKOTs project does, and how it intends to aid the protection of these fabulous and rare plants. I learnt a fantastic amount from Colin and he really opened my eyes to the world of international conservation collaboration. It is essential that countries with highly developed botanical resources share their expertise and skills, and help protect plants in these rare and diverse locations.