News

Crane Migrates Home

After seven years of directing Kew, England’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Sir Peter Crane is returning to the University of Chicago. On July 1, 2006, Crane, who helped launch the Chicago Wilderness coalition in the mid-1990s, will rejoin the university’s Geophysical Sciences department to teach students about the complex biology of plants. Though he says leaving Kew was a difficult decision, Crane is looking forward to spending more time teaching, writing, and doing research.

“I will miss Kew enormously,” he says. “Not only my wonderful friends and colleagues but also the sheer excitement and challenge of running the largest organization in the world focusing on plant diversity.” With more than 7 million specimens, Kew houses the world’s largest collection of living plants. The Royal Botanic Garden was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003 and its Millennium Seed Bank Project has developed international partnerships in an attempt to conserve 20,000 species worldwide. The Chicago Botanic Garden is a partner site in this project and Chicago Wilderness volunteers have helped collect seeds for it.

The former vice president for The Field Museum says he’s excited to return to Chicago, “the only place that could have lured me away,” and to get reacquainted with Chicago Wilderness. “It is such a wonderful initiative — really something that Chicago can truly be proud of — and I won’t be able to resist doing what I can to help. I am especially interested in thinking about how Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank can be helpful in promoting restoration and reintroduction activities.”

Crane will return to the area as Sir Peter, knighted for his services to conservation and horticulture in 2004. Crane says that his knighthood has been a great honor, but that it hasn’t greatly affected his personal life. “The most difficult bit was remembering which knee to go down on,” Crane recalls. “I suppose there are only two choices, but it seemed disproportionately confusing at the time!”

— Tegan Jones