Objectives

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Caption: Overharvesting of Pinus caribaea natural forests in Belize

Caption: The disappearance and fragmentation of natural forests is the motivation behind Camcore's work around the world

Deforestation has been occurring in the tropics and subtropics for decades. There are many causes for deforestation, including shifting cultivation, clearing for pasture, and uncontrolled wood harvesting.

This has adverse effects on important plant ecosystems, damages the environment and can ultimately damage the local economy.

Caption: Camcore's Jose Romero inspects cones of Pinus maximartinezii in Mexico for future collection and ex situ conservation bank establishment.

The other more permanent impact is that the destruction of these unique forests represents an irreversible loss of species, provenances and gene complexes. This is particularly devastating in tropical and subtropical forests since little is known about the potential uses of many species.

Camcore has worked for the last twenty-eight years to conserve some of this vanishing genetic material while it still exists. Indeed, many of the populations sampled in the 1980’s exist today only in conservation plantings established from Camcore’s collections in South America, southern Africa, and southeast Asia.

Gene conservation is the underlying objective behind Camcore’s program.