Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Last ditch appeal to save irreplaceable seed bank

A frantic appeal has been made directly to the Russian government to save an extraordinarily diverse seed collection located near St. Petersburg from real estate developers. Because the Pavlovsk Fruit and Berry Collection is "priceless," argue the developers, no monetary value can be assigned to it, thus it is essentially worthless...

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20100709020958data_trunc_sys.shtml

There's a link to an online petition at the end of the article... it'll only take a minute!

If it's so valuable why doesn't somebody just buy it off the developers?? If no government can stump up the money for a bit of farmland, then it's probably not actually important, just psychologically important.