Mission

About Us

Ark of Life was founded at the Hortus Botanicus, Leiden on 7th August, 2010 by Stewart McPherson, Marcel van den Broek and Paul Kessler as a non-profit organisation set up to prevent the extinction of species of carnivorous plants are already extirpated, or nearly extirpated in the wild.
This is our Mission...

Ark of Life ...............

CONSERVATION
By establishing and organising permanent collections of critically endangered carnivorous plants, Ark of Life offers an ex-situ approach to conservation as a ‘last resort’ mechanism to prevent total extinction of these taxa.
Preserving
Each ark is an ex-situ conservation collection that permanently preserves critically endangered carnivorous plants, so that, even if wild populations are completely lost, a viable breeding programme can be permanently maintained.
REPORTING
We organise each ark very carefully. We conserve as many genetically distinct strains of each endangered carnivorous plant taxon as possible. Each genetically distinct strain is recorded and maintained separately, and where possible, propagated and ‘backed up’ in multiple arks.
sourcing
Crucially, we source plants for Ark of Life collections only from specimens that are already in cultivation. We strictly do not source plants collected from the wild to prevent driving further poaching of wild populations (and contributing to the problem we are trying to solve).
Founding Ark of Life on 7th August 2010 (6)
Founding Ark of Life on 7th August 2010 (2)
CAPTION: Paul Kessler (left), Stewart McPherson (centre) and Marcel van den Broek (right) signed the Ark of Life founding documents on 7th August, 2010.
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Help stop the extinction of the world's rarest carnivorous plants.

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species of carnivorous plants are known worldwide
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carnivorous plants occur at a single site (in some cases, the entire wild population may be found in an area smaller than 1 km2 and consist of just a few thousand individuals!)
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(or less!) of all known plant species are carnivorous!
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the publication date of Charles Darwin’s seminal work ‘Insectivorous Plants’ which conclusively proved Drosera (and other plants) prey upon insects and other small animals.
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carnivorous plant taxa are extinct, near extinct or functionally extinct in the wild.
about us

Ark of Life Project Video

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