Securing the Nation’s Need for Native Seed
A new progress report showcases how partnership and federal investment have advanced the National Seed Strategy, a pragmatic tool for restoring healthy ecosystems.
Investing in native seeds is essential to securing the nation’s future natural resources. Using native plants and seeds to restore ecosystems is an important, practical solution that provides critical social and environmental benefits, including mitigating the impacts of droughts, wildfires, floods and extreme weather events.
However, the limited availability of locally adapted native plants to use in restoration projects presents a significant challenge to effective restoration efforts. Collecting and utilizing native seeds not only supports the restoration of vital ecosystems, but it also nurtures a growing restoration economy that creates jobs and stimulates local economies.
The Plant Conservation Alliance has made significant strides toward implementing the National Seed Strategy since 2015, when the strategy was developed—something detailed in the Alliance’s newly released National Seed Strategy Progress Report for 2022 and 2023.
The report highlights the contributions of over 300 partners across the country to meet the growing demand for native seed and plants, notably by collecting over 1,900 native seed samples and expanding the Seeds of Success program into six new states.
The report also demonstrates how federal investment in ecosystem restoration, along with recommendations from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, bolstered partnerships, research and infrastructure necessary to scale up restoration efforts that use native seeds and plants.
As one of the core federal partners, the U.S. Geological Survey provides essential research and scientific expertise collecting, evaluating, producing and using native seed for ecological restoration, land management and climate adaptation that informs the implementation of the National Seed Strategy.
“It’s fantastic to see this report highlight how much collective progress the Plant Conservation Alliance partners have made towards implementing the National Seed Strategy,” said Claudia Mengelt, the USGS Land Management Research Program Manager. “It also summarizes nicely how USGS supports this partnership with research across the nation, particularly to understand how to select the locally adapted seed mixes and appropriate seeding techniques to increase the likelihood of restoration success in places like the Mojave Desert, Sagebrush biome and Colorado Plateau.”
For land managers who are charged with preserving ecosystems as close to “natural” as possible, like the National Park Service, native seed and plants are all but a requirement for ecosystem restoration projects.
“Native seed is critical for successful ecological restoration, and this report showcases the number of partners working toward increasing the supply of seed and coordinating efforts,” said Lori Makarick, who has led implementation of the National Seed Strategy with national parks. “The National Seed Strategy is the foundation that has allowed us to make monumental strides toward having an ample supply of appropriate native seed for restoration projects. It has brought so many partners together, and this report shows us that every action matters and we are really making progress toward the four goals of the National Seed Strategy together. We are also becoming more efficient and effective every year.”
Learn more about the effort to address the nation’s need for native seeds and find previous reports on the Bureau of Land Management’s National Seed Strategy webpage.
Source: U.S. Geological Survey