OUR flora and fauna are increasingly at risk - and the more genetic material lost, the more our ecosystem becomes degraded.
It is here that native microcosms and seed banks play a crucial part.
The Royal Botanic Gardens in Cranbourne is a living zoo.
With 363 hectares of remnant vegetation, it's one of Victoria's precious areas of native bushland and home to a vast range of plant and animal life, including several rare and endangered species.
Among hundreds of species, there's the southern brown-nosed bandicoot, the blue-billed duck, the swamp skink, the Frankston spider orchid and the sun orchid.
In Victoria there are almost 700 native species, out of about 3600 known, that are considered to be in danger of becoming extinct in the next few decades.
At Cranbourne Gardens expert staff implement 'recovery plans' to ensure the long-term survival of endangered flora and fauna species, with the aim of reintroducing endangered species back into the wild.
Major threats, such as the European red fox, are addressed with a purpose-built fence around the site's perimeter. Ecologist at the Cranbourne Gardens Dr Terry Coates says there's also research under way to find ways of "targeting the specific threat" without harming other species.
Feral cats, goats and rabbits are also major threats to native fauna and flora.
"The number of bandicoots have gone up substantially since the fence has been up - we have around 400 now.
"We have built wetland habitat where there are blue-billed ducks - another threatened species - and migratory birds are also coming to the site. We also now have many Victorian smooth froglets at the park."
At the gardens, staff work alongside the Department of Sustainability and Environment and special interest groups to conserve endangered flora species..
Today it's more important than ever to preserve Australia's endangered species because over the past few decades we have had the highest rate of extinction in the world.
"This is for many reasons - introduced diseases, weeds, changed fire regimes and massive changes to the way habitat functions."
To preserve the diversity of the eworld's flora and prevent it from diminishing at the rate it has in recent decades, research institutions around the world have joined together to collect and store seeds.
This is done at the Millenium Seed Bank in Kew Gardens, West Sussex, England.
The Victorian Conservation Seed Bank at The Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne is one of about 30 countries under contract to supply seeds to the MSB.
VSB co-ordinator Jeffrey Jeanes says it supplies the MSB with specimens from its collection at the National Herbarium of Victoria, which houses about 1.2 million plant specimens.
"We target the rare and threatened flora species for the MSB," Jeanes says.
"We reduce the water content in the seed to 5 per cent and store them at sub-zero temperatures, which drastically slows down the chemical processes.
"These seeds can stay viable for up to a hundred years or more."
The idea behind a seed bank is to repopulate regions depleted of their particular native species in the future, so the goal is to be able to germinate from the seeds, Jeanes says.
By 2010, the MSB aims to conserve genetically diverse collections of seed of 10 per cent of the world's approximately 240,000 species of seed-bearing plants.
For more information on Victoria's endangered species and recovery plans ,visit www.dpi.vic.gov.au or www.environment.gov.au/epbc/index .html For more information on the Victorian Conservation Seed bank visit www.rbg.vic.gov.au/research and conservation/seedbank
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