Two hundred years ago, the Bogor Botanical Garden, locally known as Kebun Raya Bogor, was founded under the government of the Dutch East Indies in the hope that it would become a shelter to collect seeds from around the globe.

For the past two centuries, it has become a center for scientists and researchers to conserve flora and to domesticate wild plants of economic value, such as oil palm trees, which were imported from Africa.

Covering an 87-hectare lawn filled with trees and flowers, one of the world’s oldest botanical gardens is now the last bastion for Indonesia to secure its enormous biodiversity, the richest in the world after that of Brazil.

“The Bogor Botanical Garden has become one of the last bastions to conserve the country’s flora, and it needs to be maintained,” Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) chairman Iskandar Zulkarnaen said on Thursday.

The garden, one of five operated by LIPI, has become a model for other conservation parks across the archipelago.

State Palace spokesman Teten Masduki, who represented President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo during the garden’s bicentennial celebration on Thursday, encouraged regional governments to develop conservation parks in their respective areas.

Former president Megawati Soekarnoputri, who is the chairwoman of the Indonesian Botanical Garden Foundation (YKRI), attended the opening, along with high-ranking government offi-cials such as Teten, Bogor Mayor Arya Bima and Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara.

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