Seed Vault does the government around the world know something we dont

[Cricket]

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a secure seed bank located on the
Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near the town of Longyearbyen in the
remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago.Norwegian bunkers – along with the
underground lodgements built in Norway, A letter from a Norwegian
politician about 2012) it was also officially inaugurated a warehouse
with hundreds of millions of seeds to protect humanity in the case of
a
catastrophe, on 26 of February, 2008. The Prime-Minister of Norway,
Jens Stoltenberg, also an ecologist militant, Wangari Maathai (Kenya)
–
the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace, Jose Manuel Barroso – the
President of the European Commission, took part at the inauguration.
So I ask does the government around the world know something we
don't????? p.s. there are links about this
Seed Vaults
Previously I have mentioned the amazing seed vault in Norway, that
seemingly
offers plants a better chance of surviving a cataclysm than humans
have.

Other places to find species kept safe include:

Native Seeds - 2000 plant varieties in Tucson, USA.

Ambrose Monell Cryo Collection - houses a million frozen tissue
samples
representing the DNA of a wide range of animal species. Located in New
York
City.

Millennium Seed Bank Project - large underground frozen vaults in West
Sussex,
UK, preserving the world's largest collection of seeds. Now has over 1
billion
seeds stored. Aiming to cover 24,000 species of plants, approximately
10% of all
existing dry land flora.




There are more than 1,000 seed banks — including a newly opened,
unmanned
"doomsday" facility in the Arctic wastes of Norway that will
ultimately house
more than 1 billion crop seeds. But the one at Wakehurst Place, about
30 miles
south of London, says it's the only global facility of its kind,
unique for its
focus on wild species, not just crops.

It says it aims to store a quarter of the world's species by 2020, and
could
eventually house half of them. It currently has 25,000 species and 1.5
billion
seeds.

The seed bank's scientists gauge the total number of plant species at
300,000,
which represents a middle figure in the widely varying, constantly
changing,
global estimate.

It doesn't just take in seeds — it sends them out. Millennium Bank
seeds are
being used in Australia to figure out what plants can grow in salty
reclaimed
land, and in Pakistan and Egypt to find plants that can withstand
drought and
slow desert encroachment.

The bank is helping to restore tall prairie grass in the United States
and a
tropical forest in Madagascar.

Saving the world's seeds does not come cheap.

At the Millennium Seed Bank, it costs about $3,000 per species to ship
in the
seeds, meticulously clean them, X-ray them for insect damage and
freeze them for
possible future use as medicine, a commercial product, or a reviver of
a plant
that has gone extinct.

It is a global effort: The bank has more than 120 different partners
in some 50
countries where seeds are collected and stored. In many cases, seeds
are kept
both in their native countries and here as a backup.

Some countries, Brazil for instance, are unwilling to send precious
seeds
overseas, so they are kept in at least two seed banks inside the
country, their
standards monitored by Millennium Seed Bank experts.

The project, under the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, started in 2000
with 72
million pounds, then about $110 million, in funding from Britain's
national
lottery and governmental, corporate and individual sponsors.

Smith said the seed bank needs to raise about 10 million pounds ($15
million) a
year for the next decade.

The futuristic facility, with its low-slung steel and glass structure
over the
vaults, is seen by scientists as an insurance policy against nature
and human
folly. It is a quiet place, where young scientists in white smocks
spend hours
cleaning seeds by hand, using microscopes, scalpels, forceps, and tiny
brushes.
The largest is the double coconut seed, almost as big as two coconuts;
smallest
is the Venus looking glass — with more than a million seeds fitting
into a small
canister.

Before depositing the seeds in the vaults, lab workers don floor-
length parkas.

Even then, the temperature is so low that bodies start losing core
heat in 15
minutes. So elaborate safety systems are in place in case anyone is
trapped in a
vault; an AP photographer inadvertently tripped a series of ringing
alarms when
he left the vault while a worker remained inside.

Scientists call the Millennium effort invaluable as climate change
accelerates.

"The potential value of this project is almost unfathomable," said
David Astley,
head of the Genetics Resources Unit at the University of Warwick in
England, who
corroborated the Millennium Projects claim to be the world's most
diverse seed
bank.

"If you look at the way the world is going, it's inevitable that
genetic
material will be lost," said Astley, who is not connected to the
project. "The
big fear is that, if global warming comes sooner rather than later, it
may be
too late to conserve the material."

Scientists here are also developing new ways to germinate endangered
species,
including some like the South African faucaria that are down to a
single
population of plants in the wild.

"We don't know that they are useful for anything," Smith said, "but we
don't
know that they aren't useful either."

The same could be said of the roughly 80% of species here that have
not yet been
screened for possible medical use.

"Twenty years ago we didn't know the rosy periwinkle from Madagascar
would
reduce childhood leukemia to the extent that it has," said Smith.

"So who knows what we have in the bank? Our worry is that we're going
to lose
those in the wild before we even have a chance. So putting them in the
seed bank
is the most logical first step."

Already, a handful of species collected here have vanished in the wild
as
habitat is destroyed. Scientists believe these could be reintroduced
in the next
few centuries. Some seeds, they believe, may last one thousand years
under ideal
conditions.

Researchers here have already been able to germinate seeds that are
more than
200 years old, bringing to life a "pin cushion flower" — known as the
leucospermum — from seeds dating back to 1803.

The seeds tell the story of lost empire — they were first collected by
a Dutch
merchant trading in South Africa, but he was intercepted on his return
voyage by
a British privateer because Britain was at war with the Dutch at the
time.

The seeds were taken from the Dutchman, who was imprisoned in the
Tower of
London, and were eventually discovered in the National Archives and
given to the
seed bank.

Scientists expected germination attempts to fail, but were pleasantly
surprised
when they were able to grow the flowering plant at the Millennium Seed
Bank,
where it can sometimes be seen in the greenhouse.

They take this as a hopeful sign that other seeds can lay dormant for
hundreds
of years and be brought back to life.