Native Plant Conservation Campaign News: “Plant Blindness” is Still an Obstacle to Science-based Ecosystem Conservation and Rehabilitation
June 21, 2016
Reno Fish and Wildlife Service botanists, working to restore Sagebrush ecosystems using the National Seed Strategy, find that Plant Blindness is still widespread and that we must overcome it if we are to conserve and restore climate resilient ecosystems and the crucial ecosystem services they provide.
In 1998, American botanists James Wandersee and Elizabeth Schussler defined Plant Blindness as "the inability to see or notice the plants in one's own environment," which leads "to the inability to recognize the importance of plants in the biosphere and in human affairs." Plant Blindness is a factor in the ongoing declines in university botany programs, herbaria, and other plant science facilities.
To help the nation overcome plant blindness, Wandersee and Schussler appealed to teachers and students. They developed a “Prevent Plant Blindness” classroom poster as part of a national campaign to raise awareness. The poster showed an image to dramatize plant blindness (NPCC was unable to find this poster online, perhaps another symptom of the problem!). The back of the poster contained the definition and symptoms of plant blindness and 20 plant-related activities. The poster, endorsed by the Botanical Society of America, was distributed to more than 20,000 teachers in the United States.
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From the Plant Conservation Alliance:
*Reno Fish and Wildlife Service Botanist: Overcoming ‘plant blindness’ crucial to saving sagebrush sea
By Dan Hottle
June 15, 2016
**A Service botanist is teaching partners that conservation depends not only upon what’s happening on the ground, but also what’s in the ground.**
A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plant ecologist who’s every bit as tough and tenacious as the rocky, arid land she’s trying to protect for more than 3,500 species of plants and 350 species of animals and other wildlife is proving why the often-overlooked study of botany may hold the key to helping save America’s vast but rapidly declining “sagebrush sea.”
Sarah Kulpa, a botanist and plant ecologist for the Reno Fish and Wildlife Office, is leading the charge to help scientists, landowners and other partners working on protecting sagebrush across Nevada’s portion of the Great Basin understand that successful conservation not only depends upon what’s happening on the ground, but also what’s in the ground.
Too often, the missing link is seeds from native plants.
“In the field of botany, there is a term we use when referring to the inability – deliberately or not - to recognize the importance of plants for both humans and animals in the biosphere. It’s called ‘plant blindness,’” she said. “If we remain blind to plants, specifically native plants, we will be blind in understanding many other aspects of how sagebrush-dependent species rely on this ecosystem to survive."
Full article at:
Also see this short video that goes with it:
