China to launch full preservation of plant species

China is to launch a preservation program to cover all the country's plant species, a botanist announced Tuesday.

The program, expected to last ten years and involve 94 of the nation's botanical gardens, will involve a thorough survey of existing plant species across China and catalog the findings accordingly, said Chen Jin, director of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

According to Chen, who is also president of the Chinese Union of Botanical Gardens (CUBG), China currently has over 200 botanical gardens but only around 66 percent of the country's indigenous plants are covered by preservation work.

Only 34 percent of China's rare or endangered plant species are under proper preservation, Chen said, warning of poor diversity protection and a lack of balanced protection of plants from different provinces.

The CUBG secretary Jiao Yang said the preservation program currently involves eight gardens from eight typical geographic areas and targets most of the country's major plant species.

The preservation program will carry out evaluations of different species' endangerment levels and identify priorities. It also includes public awareness projects.

Also, 70 CUBG member gardens have conducted evaluations of 36,015 indigenous plant species or species from different provinces in China and preservation measures such as relocation, seed banks and protection zones have been taken for endangered species. Endi