March 2005

The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) has joined five leading conservation and botanical organizations in a new initiative to support Plant Talk magazine.

Styled as a scientific magazine rather than a journal, Plant Talk aims to support those who work for the conservation of plants, whether professional or amateur, and to encourage more to join their ranks.

With subscribers in 120 countries around the world, the quarterly magazine has an emphasis on grassroots plant conservation, and highlights cases of success. The magazine is also deeply committed to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Global Strategy for Plant Conservation and its targets for 2010.

A key aim for the new partnership is to widen the magazine’s appeal and place a stronger emphasis on the conservation and sustainable use of plants used by people in both traditional and modern societies around the world. At the same time, the partnership is keen to convey the need for alliances, sharing of agendas and joint efforts at this critical time for the global environment.

CEPF shares a key strategic aim with the magazine: The biodiversity hotspots at the heart of CEPF investment strategies are identified by local levels of plant endemism - each hotspot is home to at least 1,500 unique vascular plant species – and the degree of threat.

“Plant Talk is already read by many of our grant recipients so anything we can do to support and enrich it is very worthwhile,” CEPF Communications Director Bobbie Jo Kelso said. “Helping the conservation and development community at large is an added bonus.”

To celebrate the new partnership, Plant Talk is providing up to 300 full sets of the magazine (all 38 issues to date) to colleagues and institutions in countries where it might be difficult for them to pay. CEPF has nominated a variety of its grant recipients, particularly universities and botanical organizations, to receive the free copies.

The other members of the new partnership are ArtDatabanken (Swedish Species Information Centre); Eden Project; Plantlife International, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and the United States Botanic Garden.

For more details about Plant Talk, visit www.plant-talk.org.