Gene Conservation

Background

The conservation of forest tree genetic resources has gained enormous attention over the past several years around the world, due to the increasing needs and pressures on forest managers and politicians to address issues of sustainability. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), in its Expanded Work programme on Forests (CBD - COP6/22), Goal 4, Objective 4 is to "Develop effective and equitable information systems and strategies and promote implementation of those strategies for in situ and ex situ conservation and sustainable use of forest genetic diversity, and support countries in their implementation and monitoring." Not only is forest gene conservation critical to maintaining our stewardship responsibilities in B.C., we are also contractually obligated under international agreements such as the CBD. Good stewardship pratices of forest genetic resources also will allow forest industry better access and marketing through Certification Schemes, or Criteria and Indicators Processes.

Overview

As far back as the early 80's, people like Gene Namkoong, (e.g., Namkoong, G. 1984. A control concept for gene conservation. Silvae Genetica 33:160-163) were describing these general ideas and needs within the forest genetics community, and laying out many approaches for conservation and breeding. However, many agencies and programs were not at a point where these issues could be addressed -- as tree breeders were still developing approaches for selection, breeding and testing, largely being adapted from breeding of crop species.

Although gene conservation has been discussed for many years in the conservation literature, few initiatives really developed into anything practical. For instance, while it was desirable to think of wild populations (i.e., native reserves, such as parks or protected areas) as being a prudent thing to 'maintain', it was not clear why, how or when they might actually become useful, other than for acting as representative of some ecosystem or species. Also, in terms of genetic improvement, it was clear from short and long-term selection experiments that ample genetic variation was still available in small breeding populations of maize, fruit flies, etc., even after many generations of selection.

Research Direction and Programs

The Research Branch, Forest Genetics Section, undertakes both theoretical research and the practical applications of gene conservation activities, with input from the Gene Conservation Technical Advisory Committee of the Forest Genetics Council of B.C. (FGC), as well as with the support and input from the Center for Forest Gene Conservation at UBC (http://genetics.forestry.ubc.ca/cfgc/). Research Branch also directly provided advice to Tree Improvement Branch, and the Chief Forester, on gene resource management issues.

The general strategy in place from which most of our forest gene conservation activities are planned for B.C., is given in a paper entitled "A quantitative framework for breeding and conservation of forest genetic resource in British Columbia" by Alvin Yanchuk (Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 31:566-576).

In situ activities

Several other publications describe past and current activities related to our in situ conservation programs. The first was Research Branch, Research Note #4, entitled "A Survey of the Protected Status of Conifers in British Columbia: In situ gene conservation" by D.T. Lester and A.D. Yanchuk, and this was followed up in a paper entitled "Setting priorities for conservation of the conifer genetic resources of British Columbia" by Yanchuk, A.D. and D.T. Lester. (1996. For. Chron. 72: 406-415).

Since 1996, the number of protected areas was approximately doubled from 6% to 12% in B.C., thereby increasing the coverage of in situ protection possiblities. With the establishment of the CFGC at UBC a cataloguing project was undertaken to re-examine the conservation status of forest tree gene resources using Geographic Information System software and two newer databases that became available since the initial survey conducted by Lester and Yanchuk earlier. A brief description of the project at UBC is given in http://www.genetics.forestry.ubc.ca/cfgc/projects.html#cataloguing. The full research program is described in a paper entitled "Cataloguing in situ protection of genetic resources for major commercial forest trees in British Columbia" by Hamman, A., Aitken, S.N. and A.D. Yanchuk (2004. Forest Ecology and Management 197: 295-305). Further details of conservation status by 'ecosystem' and by 'species' are provided at the CFGC web site (http://genetics.forestry.ubc.ca/cfgc/).

Future research and programs in gene conservation

The cataloguing project at the CFGC at UBC represents an important milestone in documenting in situ conservation of forest tree genetic resources in B.C.

Work over the next few months will be focused on:

• documenting key progeny tests, provenance tests, clone banks etc. that can fill the role of inter situ populations in the conservation plan for each species.
• further evaluate the potential effects of various climate change scenarios on currently identified in situ reserves, for each species in each seed planning zone (or biogeoclimatic subzone or variant)
• ground truthing of key in situ populations and develop programs and plans to fill in the gaps identified in the cataloguing project.