Assessing botanical capacity to address grand challenges in the United States.

Plants are central to the future of scientific discovery, human well-being, and the sustainable use and preservation of the nation’s resources. The botanical community in the United States plays a mission-critical role in researching, conserving, and sustainably managing our plant diversity and resources. Botanical expertise is required to address current and future grand challenges and issues, including climate change mitigation, land management and wildlife habitat restoration, understanding the provision of ecosystem services, management and control of invasive species, and the conservation and recovery of rare species. Despite the fundamental role botanical capacity plays in tackling each of these issues, this report outlines where botanical capacity, particularly human capacity, is lacking across all sectors (government, academic, and private). In the United States over the past two decades, the botanical community has experienced significant changes in the demands placed upon it and the resources available to it. Since the early 1990s a series of published and anecdotal reports have outlined declining botanical capacity in many facets of this sector. This includes declines in human resources like botanical training and expertise, financial and management level support for research, education and application, and the loss of infrastructure such as herbaria. The nation’s science and land mana ement agenda is suffering as a result. Government agencies are losing botanical capacity as staff botanists retire and positions are not refilled, either because positions are eliminated, replaced by individuals without equivalent botanical training, or because there is an inability to find appropriately qualified new candidates to fill them. Botanical education and training likewise appears to be on the decline, with many botany departments at universities being subsumed into more general or interdisciplinary departments, and subsequently losing resident expertise as professors retire and are replaced by individuals without botanical expertise. Organizations in the private sector (e.g. botanic gardens and other non-profit conservation organizations, as well as for-profit businesses and self-employed individuals) are filling these widening gaps in capacity, providing botanical training, expertise, application, and infrastructure where it otherwise would not exist. Though there are ongoing concerns about funding and program sustainability, organizations in the private sector are poised to do more with additional resources and the right partnerships. Prior to this project, it was unclear exactly where the most critical gaps existed and which sector was most capable of filling them in both the short and long-term. Funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation was awarded to the Chicago Botanic Garden to carry out a one year project to assess the nation’s current and future botanical capacity to conduct research in the plant sciences, to educate the public, train the next generation of plant scientists, and to conserve and manage the nation’s native plant species and habitat. In conducting this assessment, we utilized all background information available relating to botanical capacity (education, training, research, application, and infrastructure) in the United States. We conducted literature searches and obtained documents on plant science education, research, and application. With this information, and in consultation with members of an established Advisory Board and other individuals in the botanical community, we developed and conducted a series of seven on-line surveys. This included surveys for individuals involved in plant science research, education, or natural resource management at 1) federal government agencies; 2)state heritage programs; 3) other regional, state, county or city government agencies; 4) non-profit organizations; 5) self-employed and for-profit companies; 6) graduate school (master’s and doctoral graduate students); and 7) academia (faculty and administrators). Surveys focused primarily but not exclusively on the humanly components of botanical capacity, and were open and publicly available for 8 weeks during the summer of 2009, with requests for participation sent via print and electronic means (e.g. the Botanical Society of America’s Plant Science Bulletin, Facebook, websites, email, and through plant science, conservation, ecology and related listserves). We registered more than 1,500 survey respondents representing all 50 states, an indication that this topic is important and of interest throughout the United States. Survey results were an important source of information for this report, as the last time a survey was carried out that specifically targeted the botanical community in the United States was in 1989. Most surveys have been focused on a single sector (primarily the research/training components of the academic sector). To our knowledge, this is the first time multiple sectors of the botanical community (e.g. the entire pipeline from education and training to research, application, and employment) in the United States have been surveyed simultaneously.