Macquarie University/The Lighthouse
Countless species worldwide are in need of urgent conservation, but we only have the resources to provide for captive populations of a small number of them. Biobanking could be the answer, say Macquarie University researchers.
In a south-eastern suburb in Melbourne, there’s a zoo. It has no visitors, and there are no animals anywhere inside it. Rather, the Australian Frozen Zoo houses living cells and genetic material from Australian native and rare and exotic species. This place, and others like it, could be a big part of the future of conservation. Macquarie University’s Simon Clulow and his colleagues make the case for ‘biobanking’ in a recent piece in Conservation Letters.