Today is Arbor Day! Thousands of trees will be planted across the United States of America today to celebrate this longstanding tradition. We would like to add to the excitement on this important day in the tree conservation calendar by sharing some exciting news…..

A new partnership between the Global Trees Campaign and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank Partnership will step up conservation for some of the world’s most threatened tree species.

Through a four year project supported by the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Global Trees Campaign and the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership will work with our existing and new partners around the world to deliver seed collection training and establish ex situ seed collections for threatened tree species. Seed collections will be established in the country of origin of the threatened species, and back up collections will also be established in the Millennium Seed Bank, a secure underground vault in West Sussex, UK. The Millennium Seed Bank already provides conservation for over 30,000 plant species making it the largest ex situ plant conservation project in the world.

This joint programme will add another level of conservation security to many of the threatened tree species already involved in Global Trees Campaign projects. It will also allow us to expand our current programme and bring additional threatened tree species into secure ex situ conservation programmes.

Seed conservation is of vital importance for threatened tree species, allowing wide genetic diversity to be preserved without demanding the large amounts of space and curatorial care required for living tree collections. As well as protection from extinction, seed collections are used in reintroduction and restoration programmes to improve the conservation status of threatened trees.

The Global Trees Campaign is committed to integrated tree conservation, involving in situ protection and reinforcement to prevent extinction in the wild and ensure healthy wild populations, as well as ex situ approaches. We will continue to look for further funding to expand our in situ and species reinforcement programmes to secure the future of some of the most endangered trees in the world.

Feel like celebrating this exciting news with us? Plant a threatened tree at one of our projects for Arbor Day!

More news about this new collaboration soon on our website….

Arbor Day is celebrated in the United States of America on the last Friday of April each year to mark the birthday of J. Sterling Morton, an advocate for tree planting who declared the first Arbor Day in 1872.