Written by Margaret Park, Coordinating Botanist for the Plant Conservation Alliance, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The 9th Annual International Conference on Ecological Restoration provided the perfect backdrop to highlight a national effort to increase the native seed supply and improve restoration outcomes in the United States. Convened by Patricia De Angelis, Chair of the Plant Conservation Alliance Federal Committee, the symposium, U.S. National Seed Strategy: First 5 years and what the future holds, explores implementation progress since the Strategy’s unveiling in 2015, examines a regional model of collaboration and coordination, and contemplates future directions to accelerate the pace and scale of ecological restoration across the country. Featuring 6 plant conservation experts from around the country and from both the private and public sectors, the panelists exemplify the multi-sector, collaborative approach envisioned by the Seed Strategy. The symposium includes 6 pre-recorded presentations and a live discussion session with over 30 attendees from the United States, Canada, Spain, and Brazil.
The National Seed Strategy (NSS) for Rehabilitation and Restoration fosters collaboration among federal government agencies and their partners to increase the availability and use of native seed needed for timely and effective restoration. With four broad goals to address seed needs, research needs, decisions tools, and communications strategies, the Seed Strategy provides a framework for a coordinated national approach to ecological restoration. Initial results of a federal report on progress to implement the Seed Strategy in its first five years shows that 380 partners across 17 federal agencies, 52 state and territories, 20+ tribal nations, and other non-federal partners undertook 460 projects and invested $167 million to improve the nation’s native seed supply and restoration outcomes.
In “Goal 1: Assessing supply and demand for native seed in the United States,” Dr. Kayri Havens, Chicago Botanic Garden, focuses on the importance of a national strategy to address the lack of planting materials needed for large-scale restoration with native seed that is genetically diverse with the ‘place-based’ ecological adaptations needed for successful long-term restoration outcomes. Such biologically diverse seed is generally lacking from the commercial marketplace and Kay’s research to characterize and address this problem is the vital first step to improving our national native seed supply. Dr. Havens also sits on an ad hoc study committee of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that is currently conducting a national assessment of federal, state, tribal, and private sector native seed needs and capacity to meet those needs; results are expected at the end of this year.
The next panelist, Dr. Lesley DeFalco, U.S. Geological Survey, introduces “Goal 2: Science-based approaches for selecting the right seed for the right place at the right time.” She explores some of the scientific avenues to address the shortage of native seeds that are important for habitat restoration, by discussing her habitat restoration work as part of the Mojave Desert Native Plant Program, a multi-agency/multi-sector collaboration established by BLM in 2016 to address the challenges of habitat restoration in the region. She describes steps to identify priority species and build upon existing information to undertake research to further inform and guide restoration in the desert southwest.
Vicky Erickson, U.S. Forest Service, explains efforts to support land managers in making decisions throughout the entire restoration process (from seed planning and selection, production, through implementation) as part of “Goal 3: Decision Tools for Land Managers.” She describes a long-standing research partnership out of the Northern Great Basin and interior Pacific Northwest, and decision support tools and methodologies that have been developed and continue to be refined and improved to inform a broader range of species and decision-making needs for more effective restoration practices.
To discuss progress toward the fourth pillar of the Seed Strategy, Dr. Patricia De Angelis, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, explains “Goal 4: Fostering Progress as a Collaborative Effort.” Internal and external communications are vital to making these collaborative efforts work—beginning with a communications toolkit to focus the messages and using various communications vehicles to carry those messages and receive feedback. She shares progress on Seed Strategy communications across fifteen U.S. federal agencies of the Plant Conservation Alliance and touches upon networking to improve information sharing undertaken by the Fish & Wildlife Service.
Ed Toth, New York City Parks and Mid-Atlantic Regional Seed Banks, presents “The Mid-Atlantic Regional Seed Bank: A Case Study in Actualizing the National Seed Strategy.” He describes how the Greenbelt Native Plant Center (New York City, New York) has been working over the past 25 years to develop extensive seed collections, culminating in the creation of the Mid-Atlantic Seed Bank in 2014 to take a regional approach to those collection efforts. To date, they have made thousands of collections. He describes emerging areas and directions for such regional efforts in the coming years that will continue to further the goals of the Seed Strategy.
To explore what may lie ahead for this national effort, Peggy Olwell, Bureau of Land Management, presents “Moving Forward: Seeding the Future.” She describes possible future directions that may include developing national policy on the use of native seed, building up botanical and ecological expertise in the federal agencies and private sector, and possibly a national support center to facilitate regional in ecological native seed restoration.
Providing a first glimpse of progress made in the initial five years of the National Seed Strategy, the Symposium shares advances in interagency and cross-sector collaboration to convey why “local matters” and why getting “the right plants” takes time. The coming decade challenges us to intensify cross-sector efforts at different scales (local, regional, national) and to address the many needs of specific project objectives (habitat for imperiled species versus forage for domesticated animals versus erosion control), and so continue advancing national efforts to ensure we have the right seed at “the right place at the right time.”