RARE @ Parliament of Victoria

Champions of conservation and biodiversity will gather at Parliament House for this vital Science Week discussion about the extinction crisis facing thousands of Australia’s native species, and what we can do about it.

Our State’s remarkable botanical and zoological collections are carefully managed by Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria and Zoos Victoria, while Museums Victoria maintains significant collections related to the natural history of our region and the wider world. These familiar institutions do more than offer an interesting place for Victorians to visit – they are also engines of research and field work, helping the State of Victoria to future-proof the unique plants and animals of our region against bushfires, floods, the ongoing impacts from our spreading towns and cities, our intensive farming practices, and our changing climate.

Our public science institutions all care for the rare – through the Seed Bank maintained at the National Herbarium, through activating the amazing network of community botanic gardens across metropolitan and regional Victoria, through the tissue and DNA samples cryogenically stored by Museums Victoria in a BioBank to safeguard the genetic diversity of threatened species, and through the captive breeding programs for species on the brink of extinction, diligently nurtured back to population health by biologists and ecologists at Zoos Victoria.

Join us for this RARE panel conversation, streamed live from Parliament House, to learn from the botanists, zoologists and collection managers leading this important work. Find out some of the ways they are planning to help our plants and animals adapt and persist through the multiple challenges in our immediate future.

Presented in partnership with the Royal Society of Victoria, the Parliament of Victoria, and the Victorian Parliamentarians for STEM for National Science Week 2022.