Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden . 2002 . Volume 89 ( 2 ). Conservation, the 47th Annual Systematics Symposium of the Missouri Botanical Garden . MissouriBotanical Garden , St. Louis , MO. 304 pp . $35.00 (paperback) . ISSN 0026-6493 . This special volume of the Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden constitutes the proceedings of the 47th Annual Systematics Symposium of the Missouri Botanical Garden held in St. Louis, Missouri, in October 2000. The proceedings consist of an introductory statement by Schatz and Richardson and six subsequent articles by various authors. Joel Cracraft begins the collection of articles with his essay, “The Seven Great Questions of Systematic Biology: an Essential Foundation for Conservation and the Sustainable Use of Biodiversity,” and the statement that four themes—diversity, phylogeny, biogeography, and classification—underpin all biological knowledge. This view of the role of systematics in biology includes the supposition that systematic biology is an essential foundation for conservation. He continues his argument about the importance of systematics in conservation with an emphasis on the need to replace the biological species concept (BSC) with the phylogenetic species concept (PSC). Cracraft fails to mention, however, that like the BSC, the PSC can overlook spatial variation. Cracraft's overstatement of the utility of systematic biology discounts habitat type, habitat utilization, organismal specialization, and biotic interactions. Species determinations, number of species, and species distributions each have an important application to conservation biology but overlook other levels of organization (e.g., the population). Conservation biologists have long recognized the need to replace the emphasis on species with a focus on populations. Ultimately, many of the applications described by Cracraft represent more discipline-centered than practical conservation biology. The article “Taxonomy and Herbaria in Service of Plant Conservation: Lessons from Madagascar's Endemic Families” by George Schatz, emphasizes that the overall assessment of plant taxa depends on conservation status and historical representation. There are currently over 300,000 named plant species, and the dearth of information for at-risk species presents a daunting task for information management. Implementation of restoration projects for organisms threatened with extinction is difficult, if not impossible, without a historical record of range and habitat. As such, herbaria provide a critical resource as libraries of plant specimens. They document the past and current distribution of the earth's flora and will prove useful in the prediction of floristic changes due to global warming. Herbarium administrators are integral to the identification of plant taxa, particularly those that may have limited distribution and abundance but possess some prospect of feasible resuscitation. Advances in systematic analyses combined with historical data can minimize the time and cost associated with rare species conservation. If the 3000 herbaria of the world contributed their records to a central database on the Internet, one could assess all known occurrences of a given taxon and its distributional information in a matter of minutes. In an ever-changing biotic and technological environment, this central database would allow taxonomic and distributional revisions to be done expediently. Plant species currently are experiencing an excelerated rate of extinction, and a central database would help minimize further floristic losses. Schatz emphasizes the importance of immediate taxonomic revisions by focusing on the endemic families of Madagascar. He includes the importance of the what, where, and when of plant collections and species distributions through the use of georeferencing and global positioning systems (GPS). Geographical information is useful for ranking protected areas. Similarly, conservation is difficult for species that lack relevant primary data that have not been georeferenced. Collections that contain a large number of endemic taxa must be prioritized for a comprehensive geographic and documentation analysis. Geographical information can be added to a central database along with current ecological data, and then conservation efforts can be set in motion. Although Schatz outlines a monumental task, he provides a convincing argument for the central availability of taxonomic, distributional, and ecological data. “Wilderness: a New Force in Conservation” by Debra Moskovits, Carol Fialkowski, Gregory Mueller, and Timothy Sullivan uses the Chicago Wilderness movement as a model for the preservation of urban restoration programs throughout the United States. The Chicago Wilderness project consists of laypeople, ecological scientists, and land managers working toward the preservation of lost, degraded, or altered habitat in the Chicago area. Chicago Wilderness has taken extra steps to ensure a successful and well-received program through the development of environmental education programs. Clearly, organizers of this program recognize the value of public education and involvement. City inhabitants play an important role in restructuring habitat conservation plans in their communities. For example, citizens can assist field scientists through the collection of “backyard” data that can be uploaded to the internet and made available to the science team of Chicago Wilderness. Although the focus of the article by Moskovits et al. is on the positive aspects of the Chicago Wilderness program, it would have been useful to learn about other similar programs in the United States that have been implemented where habitats and taxa are critically endangered. The efforts of the Chicago Wilderness program to preserve the few remaining habitat fragments and to connect them via corridors are laudable. Even with preservation, however, the urban context provides an uncertain future for species assemblages that remain. Connection of habitat fragments via corridors disregards many ecological phenomena, such as invasion by exotic species, edge effects, demographic effects on small populations, fragmented ecotones, and historical species assemblages. And although preservation of some urban areas is essential to conservation, to preserve for solely humanistic reasons undermines the intrinsic value of habitat and species diversity. Despite the need for the brief mention of potential pitfalls in programs such as these, conservation within city environments is important, and it is useful see this perspective integrated into the symposium and its proceedings. The well-integrated “Safeguarding Species, Languages, and Cultures in the Time of Diversity Loss: from the Colorado Plateau to Global Hotspots” by Gary Nabhan, Patrick Pynes, and Tony Joe is a broad presentation of a diverse and endangered resource. Their presentation of the critical need to assimilate and conserve the biological and cultural diversity of this region is moving. Of particular note is the emphasis on the inclusion of Native American communities in the conservation planning of the Colorado Plateau. Historically, the lack of inclusion of native people for biological planning is inexcusable, a point made more tactfully by the authors than by us. A number of important and sound global conservation strategies that include the involvement of native peoples are provided. They should be read and expanded upon by every conservation manager at every scale. In “The Dodo Went Extinct,” Stuart Pimm writes to silence those who dispute the broad consensus that species are going extinct at unprecedented rates. Pimm underscores the rapid loss of taxa from the destruction of species-rich tropical moist forests. Critics argue that island species, the flightless dodo of Mauritius for example, were susceptible to human hunting, destruction of local vegetation, and introduction of exotic plants and animals. In actuality, the dodos were clubbed to death by Western sailors in the first years of European contact. Further, critics argue that extinction rates are drastic overestimates because they are based on islands, and that taxa on continents should fare much better. Pimm notes that on both oceanic and insular islands, however, there are few species and larger populations of these few species. He further states that taxa that reside in continental areas often occur in relatively small numbers. Thus, human disturbance does have an adverse effect on continental populations. Pimm demonstrates that it can take up to several decades for a species to disappear once its primary habitat has been destroyed, whether it be on an island or a continent. He uses species-loss formulas developed from eastern U.S. forests to demonstrate that these formulas accurately match species actually lost in Southeast Asian islands and Atlantic forests in Brazil. Pimm illustrates the history of extinction with examples from Hawaii, the Cape Floristic region of South Africa, Australia, American rivers, and Caribbean islands. Throughout his article, Pimm underscores the need for funding of conservation by industrialized nations to benefit developing countries. Overall, these proceedings provide somewhat refreshing approaches to what have become, sadly, traditional methods of conservation. We are finally moving from the document, collect, and set-aside mindset of conservation to the recognition that cultural, political, and biological factors all need to be assimilated to conserve the natural world.