Native Plant Conservation Campaign News: This is how its done! Rare bees and other wildlife thrive in restored plant communities in San Francisco.

March 30, 2019

 

Native plant restoration works! After a century, rare native bees that had vanished from the city are among the wildlife that have returned to the Presidio in San Francisco.

 

When native plant communities are restored, the rest of the local food web comes back as well. This is being demonstrated spectacularly in San Francisco, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.  The Presidio has been a model for plant restoration and species recovery since 1994, when the old military base became a National Park.

 

Wild bees are among many wildlife taking advantage of the restored habitat. Butterflies, hummingbirds, coyotes, a large population of native western chorus frogs have also returned.

 

Rare native plants have benefitted too. At least four federally listed plants have reappeared,  among them the Presidio clarkia. The article reports that the Presidio is just one of many areas in California where restoration of local native plant communities has led to a bonanza for imperiled animals and other wildlife.

 

Leslie Saul-Gershenz, a UC Davis entomologist, notes “… it’s important to study [these bees] and protect the habitats they live in now, because they may be the bees we need to pollinate in the future,” she said. “This native bee is unique in how it has these relationships with certain native plants, which also support other native species, like butterflies, which in turn support birds. These things are all connected and the bees are an indicator species of the health of our ecosystem.”

 

Read the article in the San Francisco Chronicle

 

Photos (c) Emily Roberson, CA Department of Fish and Wildlife