Conservation experts from the world’s leading botanical gardens met in St. Louis this week and called for a renewed effort to link ecological restoration with the elimination of poverty in natural resource-dependent communities. In Madagascar, for example, the Missouri Botanical Garden provides training and jobs to local people who in turn assist with ecological restoration in diversity-rich areas. All too often, there are no viable economic alternatives to the degradation of biodiverse ecosystems. Member gardens are committed to offering alternatives that restore damaged land while providing income for those living in these areas.

The Missouri Botanical Garden and their partner organizations are pleased to announce a designer has been selected for the project “Purposeful Gaming and the BHL” which will serve to improve access to texts in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) through online gaming. Dartmouth College’s Tiltfactor was selected as designer. The Garden is working with Harvard University, Cornell University and The New York Botanical Garden on the project.

The William L. Brown Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden selected Dr. Cary Fowler for the Center’s 7^th William L. Brown Award for Excellence in Genetic Resource Conservation. Dr. Fowler has been committed to the conservation of plant resources throughout his career.

The Missouri Botanical Garden’s Herbarium collection reached 6.5 million specimens with the addition of a new genus described by Garden curator Dr. Carmen Ulloa in collaboration with Dr. Fabián Michelangeli and Karla Sosa of The New York Botanical Garden. Their discovery, “Quipuanthus, a New Genus of Melastomataceae from the foothills of the Andes in Ecuador and Peru” was published today in the scientific journal “Systematic Botany.”

After an extensive search, the Missouri Botanical Garden has named Dr. James Miller to the position of Senior Vice President, Science and Conservation. Dr. Miller previously worked at the Garden for more than 20 years before departing in 2007 to serve as Dean and Vice President for Science at The New York Botanical Garden. He begins his new role on December 30.

The Missouri Botanical Garden was recently awarded a $449,641 grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to test new means of using crowd sourcing and gaming to support the enhancement of texts from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). Grant funding begins in December 2013 and ends in December 2015. The Garden will partner with Harvard University, Cornell University and the New York Botanical Garden on the project.

Researchers from the Missouri Botanical Garden recently completed a 26-year project documenting the flora of the state of Missouri. The result is the release of “Steyermark’s Flora of Missouri, Volume 3. Dicots, Fabaceae (second part) through Zygophyllaceae.” For more than two decades, the Garden has worked in collaboration with the Missouri Department of Conservation on this project.

Sacred Seeds, an international non-profit that supports plant conservation and addresses the rapid loss of biodiversity and cultural knowledge, has extended its reach to Europe through collaboration with L’Herboretum whose international headquarters are in Saint-Ay, France.  Sacred Seeds is a network of plant gardens devoted to preserving plants of medicinal and cultural significance. The program is administered by the Missouri Botanical Garden’s William L. Brown Center.

The Missouri Botanical Garden will host a number of leading individuals and organizations May 1-2 to evaluate and share information on how ethnobotany and economic botany can contribute to a greater global strategy for plant conservation. Participants in the workshop include representatives from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden in China, Bioversity International in Italy and The New York Botanical Garden among others.

Researchers at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s William L. Brown Center have discovered extraordinarily high levels of omega fatty acids in a species which they encountered in Northern Peru. Omega fatty acids are essential for human health and must be obtained through food sources. Omega-3 fatty acids are also widely used in cosmetics.