Ex situ conservation

When a species becomes critically endangered, additional, more direct measures are sometimes needed to protect it -- this is ex-situ conservation, in which living organisms are protected away from their natural habitat, in specially created settings. Wildlife safari parks, zoological parks and botanical gardens all serve this purpose, allowing animals whose numbers have fallen sharply to breed in captivity under protection, as is done, for instance, at the crocodile bank in Chennai. Seed banks are maintained to conserve wild varieties of food grains and vegetables, and modern techniques such as tissue culture, in-vitro fertilisation of eggs, and cryopreservation (storing gametes at ext …