Native Plant Conservation Campaign News: NPCC Holds First National Affiliate Conference Call of 2017, Bringing Together 18 U.S. Plant Conservation Groups
January 19, 2017
On Friday, January 13, 2017, the Native Plant Conservation Campaign held an historic national conference call for its
Affiliates. The call brought together plant societies and botanic gardens from 18 states in all regions of the U.S.
The participating groups varied widely in size - from around 100 members (e.g. Iowa Native Plant Society) to 50,000 members (New York Botanic Garden), and in structure - from the many all-volunteer groups to the California Native Plant Society, with as many as 30 paid staff.
Each organization shared their victories and challenges from 2016. Most native plant groups are staffed entirely by volunteers and achieve amazing plant conservation successes with extremely limited resources. Most are involved in managing and protecting conservation areas in their states. All held successful conferences and festivals over the past year, and offered an wide and diverse array of botanical field trips, presentations, and publications, many of which are available online. Most native plant societies also offer small grant programs to encourage botanical research and conservation in their states. Affiliates reported that the number of states celebrating “Native Plant Weeks” and “Native Plant Months” has increased dramatically. Almost all Affiliates offered programs to encourage pollinator gardening, most aimed at helping the declining Monarch butterfly.
Scott Black, Executive Director of the
Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, was our guest speaker for this call. He spoke about how native plant groups and Xerces can work together to encourage landscaping with native plants to support native pollinators and diverse native wildlife generally. Future guest speakers will include Doug Tallamy of the University of Delaware and NatureServe botanists.
Many groups reported on unique and innovative approaches to problems like member recruitment, outreach, and encouraging gardening with locally appropriate native plants. A few examples of new approaches that were discussed:
- Florida Native Plant Society has launched a YouTube channel, where viewers can view videos on pollinator gardening, how to handle Homeowner Association Rules that restrict native plant gardening, and general information about FNPS, with more videos in development
- The Virginia Native Plant Society's effective use of social media has garnered them over 10,000 Facebook followers.
- The Washington Native Plant Society’s flagship native plant Stewardship Program trains 30 people annually in issues related to native plants and habitats.
- Arizona Native Plant Society has teamed with Northern Arizona University and University of Arizona to develop the “Botany 101” program which trains volunteers and matches them with plant community restoration projects.
- The New York Botanic Garden’s NYC EcoFlora Project is adapting a model from the UK to create an online database of the flora of New York City. This is one of several new citizen science projects Affiliates are pursuing.
- The Colorado Native Plant Society held a very successful online native plant sale.
This only scratches the surface of the myriad plant science and conservation programs discussed. To learn more about NPCC Affiliates and their activities and publications, check out the
NPCC Affiliates page on our website.
