Euroguard 97 -

"Eurogard97", the 1st European Botanic Gardens Conference, was held at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh from 2-5 April, organized by RBG Edinburgh, BGCI and IABG. The aim of the conference was to identify priorities for botanic gardens for inclusion in a European Botanic Garden Action Plan for the countries of the European Union and to promote closer cooperative links and collaboration amongst botanic gardens throughout Europe.

The conference was proposed and organized through the BGCI/IABG joint advisory European Botanic Gardens Consortium, a body established in 1994 to plan Europe-wide initiatives for botanic gardens, especially within the context of developing national action plans to contribute towards implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity, and to promote the implementation of European and other international legislation such as the European Commission's Habitats Directive, the Bern Convention, CITES and the Ramsar Convention.

Introduction

Europe has provided a cradle for the establishment of the world's botanic gardens. Not only were the earliest botanic gardens European, (Pisa, Padua, Leiden, Oxford etc) but so too were the earliest tropical botanic gardens established by the European colonial powers.

Today in the European Union there are up to 400 botanic gardens. In the whole of the continent of Europe that total rises to over 550 botanic gardens, about one third of the botanic gardens of the world. This can be compared with 155 in the countries of the former Soviet Union and 250 in the United States.

Although international exchange of plant material and scientific publications between botanic gardens have been a feature of their operations for centuries, the last two decades has seen a burgeoning number of new and active national and international cooperative alliances between botanic gardens nationally, regionally and internationally. Botanic Garden networks have been established in many countries including Australia, Indonesia, Latin America, and the United States. In Europe there are now botanic garden and plant collection networks in most countries, - the Baltic States, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

Botanic Gardens Conservation International was itself established ten years ago in 1987 and now includes 180 institutional members in Europe of which 130 are botanic gardens situated in the countries of the European Union.

At the beginning of 1994, David Bramwell (Las Palmas Botanic Garden, Spain and a BGCI Trustee), Esteban Hernández Bermejo (Secretary General, IABG and Córdoba Botanic Garden, Spain) and Peter Wyse Jackson (Secretary General, BGCI) met in Córdoba not only to plan future cooperation between Botanic Gardens Conservation International and the International Association of Botanic Gardens but also to consider how a new networking initiative for European botanic gardens could be launched. We were all concerned that botanic gardens were receiving insufficient recognition from national and European authorities and, of course, very little European Union funding.

As a result of our meeting, David Bramwell and the Viera y Clavijo Botanic Garden in Las Palmas agreed to host a first exploratory meeting of representatives of major European botanic gardens which was held in Gran Canaria in May 1994. At that meeting the joint BGCI/IABG advisory committee, the European Botanic Gardens Consortium, was born.

The meeting proposed that the aims of the Consortium could be best achieved by formulating a European Botanic Gardens Action Plan to help to develop a framework for concerted action by botanic gardens within Europe and subsequently working for its implementation. It was agreed that botanic garden activities should be considered in a wide sense, to include conservation, environmental education, ethnobotany, amenity horticulture, landscape and habitat restoration and management, species recovery, research, tourism and many other fields.

Subsequent meetings of the Consortium were held in:

Frankfurt, Germany, November, 1994 Meise, Belgium, April, 1995 Utrecht, The Netherlands, November, 1995 Pisa, Italy, April, 1996 C¢rdoba, Spain, December, 1996 Membership of the Consortium was by invitation, selected by BGCI and IABG, although the members of the Consortium have been drawn from a wide variety of major botanic gardens in the European Union. However, at "eurogard97" a new representative structure was proposed to ensure that each country could select its own future representation in this forum. To date, the gardens represented at the Consortium meetings have been from:
AUSTRIA, BELGIUM, DENMARK, FRANCE, GERMANY, IRELAND, THE NETHERLANDS, PORTUGAL, SPAIN, U.K.

At a meeting of the Consortium it was proposed that the 1st European Botanic Gardens Conference be held, to help ensure that the broader botanic garden community could be involved in and contribute to the work of the Consortium and in the formulation of the Action Plan. The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh agreed to host the meeting which was subsequently held in April 1997.

Some of the achievements of the Consortium in the three years since its establishment are:

• a strengthened network for botanic gardens within the European Union - establishing or renewing friendships and cooperative links and providing a regular opportunity for participants to share information on the major national activities and priorities of botanic gardens in their own countries
• new links have been established between European botanic gardens and European Union structures, particularly with the European Commission and European Parliament
• a basic survey of the numbers of European botanic gardens and their resources and staff
• a new European endangered plant conservation initiative was developed which was considered at "eurogard97"
• surveys of Bern Convention listed species in cultivation in botanic gardens and environmental education activities in botanic gardens