Doom'sday Vault

SUMMERY
This year, the world celebrates the International Year of Biodiversity where countries recognize the importance of the range of the world's wildlife. The IRRI, or International Rice Research Institute, has 42,627 samples of different types of rice seeds they'd collected sent to the Svalbard Global seed Vault called the "Doomsday Vault". The black boxes of rices seeds were transported across the Norwegian archipelago 1,200 kilometers from the North Pole. There, the conditions are best for preservation in preparation and insurance in the case of a global catastrophy. The first and largest deposit into the vault was made during it's inauguration in February 2008. 70,180 rice samples were locked in the vault. And, Nearly 110,000 types of rice are kept in long-term storage at the base where they can be stored for hundreds of years. So far, 126 countries are contracted in fair shares of benefits from the resources stored in the vault.
OPINION
I'm glad that countries worldwide are taking steps to preserve global diversity. And, even without the case of a global catastrophe, there's still species that are going extinct. With the help of genetic engineering and the samples we're preserving, we could revive species from the brink of extinction. And, I'm sure this is already taking place in labs where they're creating samples to freeze for genetic material.
BRITTANY BURNS
http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2010/11/08/genetic_diversity_of_rice_now_secure_in_doomsday_vault.html