Ark of Life is a non-profit project that aims to prevent the extinction of the world’s rarest species of carnivorous plants. Visit www.arkoflife.net for more information. Unfortunately, many carnivorous plant species occur across very small natural ranges and are extremely sensitive to habitat disturbance. To make matters worse, many carnivorous plants command high prices amongst horticulturists and are intensively targeted by illegal poaching. In recent years, these factors have resulted in several carnivorous plant taxa becoming critically endangered, extinct, near-extinct or functionally extinct in the wild. One of the most dramatic examples of recent years is that of Nepenthes rigidifolia, in which every single known wild specimen has been illegally poached. All known populations of this plant are completely extirpated, and the species is now regarded as extinct in the wild. But… it is not too late to save the world’s rarest carnivorous plants… even Nepenthes rigidifolia. The Ark of Life project brings together a network of botanical gardens and horticulturists that are determined to stop the world’s rarest species of carnivorous plants disappearing forever. We create ‘arks’. Each ark is an ex-situ conservation collection that permanently preserves critically endangered carnivorous plants, so that, even if wild populations are completely lost, a viable breeding programme can be permanently maintained. Our goal is to safeguard each critically endangered carnivorous plant taxon against total extinction and to keep alive hope for future reintroduction back into the wild. We organise each ark very carefully. We conserve as many genetically distinct strains of each endangered carnivorous plant taxon as possible. Each genetically distinct strain is recorded and maintained separately, and where possible, propagated and ‘backed up’ in multiple arks. Crucially, we source plants for Ark of Life collections only from specimens that are already in cultivation. We strictly do not source plants collected from the wild to prevent driving further poaching of wild populations (and contributing to the problem we are trying to solve). Visit www.arkoflife.net for more information.