The Things People Could Do if Only They/We Would (on cooperative conservation efforts)

First and foremost, keep things alive, i.e. in widely separated back- and front yards in all climate zones of California; agree to grow decent-size populations of rare or localized or special annuals (and perennials too) from year to year, far enough apart from each other to avoid cross-pollination and in large enough numbers to ensure a viable gene pool, and with enough duplicate locations to ensure different selection factors so as to avoid the on-site selection effect and so as to avoid some freak accident or disease wiping out the strain.

Imagine the possibilities--especially for showy outcrossers such as Trifolium grayi--with about a dozen dissimilar meta-populations, being grown year to year in all sorts of soil and microclimates, but (preferably) not too far from the natural populations, by a network of gardeners keeping in touch via the internet or in person, with no chance of gene-scrambling such as one or a few growers would have who tried to keep all the forms going in one garden, juggling the different forms in different parts of the garden, or in different years, and limited to growing them in small numbers in containers. . . .  Imagine the vast resources available in California gardens, the vast manpower, the vast distances, the vast possibilities.

What is done now only imperfectly and sporadically (or most often not at all) could be done efficiently, with thousands of people making a major conservation  (and even scientific) contribution to the survival of the hugely diverse California native flora.  (Expand on how this could be done, using T. grayi as an example)

Likewise, with so much private wealth/resources in the hands of so many good-hearted people who are inclined to do something useful for “nature” but without clear guidance or purpose . . . and on the other hand, how stretched and overtaxed and cramped and underfunded and underspaced our big scientific institutions:  herbaria, botanic gardens, museums, research institutions, in a time and place groaning with affluence!

And, greatest waste of all, that talented, imaginative, good-hearted people are being given nothing more meaningful to do with their money and time and good will than planting redwoods or making donations to obscure causes.  What better way to re-integrate people with nature than in such hands-on ways, with projects that are of real value, not just feel-good or busy-work or window-dressing.

Why have not the scientific and gardening communities come together in such ways long ago, considering how great the benefits could be to both?  And to nature.  (Expand on this, vis a vis the need for a clearing-house type of organization to facilitate, and also to keep records and collect data.  And the missing link between germplasm/seed banks and conservation, and the idea that conservation of habitat and the pets in situ, in natural context is paramount, but that such “plant zoos” are an essential insurance policy.)

There is a crying need here for people with entrepreneurial/organizational skills to put their heads together and figure a way for something like this to work.  The possibilities are limitless.