Dear Friends: 

Please consider a gift to my new conservation group, the Native Plant Conservation Campaign. See our general appeal below. 

Your contribution is espescially important at this time because this is our first year as a stand-alone organization (!), so your contribution will literally help get the NPCC off the ground. Also, of course we, the plants and the planet will all face unprecedented challenges in 2017. 

Please also share this appeal with anyone you know who is interested in helping native plants.

For more information on the Campaign and its programs, check out our website.

Thank you! 

Emily

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Dear Native Plant Enthusiast:

The Native Plant Conservation Campaign is a network of grassroots native plant conservation organizations.  With 45 Affiliate groups in nearly every state in the nation, and representing over 150,000 individual members, we have created the Native Plant Society of the United States.

You contribution will help us continue to expand and strengthen this unified voice for native plants.

 

Grassroots activism is more important than ever.  Biological diversity and the environment have emerged as major issues for our era, yet we may no longer be able to rely on our own government to enforce conservation laws or to use the best science in managing wildlands, plants and wildlife.

The NPCC is uniquely positioned to reach the public throughout the U.S. and to supply conservation expertise where it is needed, including in areas traditionally less likely to be exposed or respond to conservation messages.

Plants are the foundation of life on earth, but their essential role is not widely appreciated. Laws to protect imperiled plants are much weaker than those for animals, and plant conservation programs are underfunded and understaffed.

Even the federal Endangered Species Act, one of the planet’s most effective conservation laws provides inferior protection to endangered plants compared to animals.

Native plants supply vital ecosystem services such as water storage and purification, flood control, soil fertility, and habitat for pollinators and wildlife. They also produce food, fiber and medicine for humans and other animals.

Yet, most conservation organizations, agencies, and initiatives focus on animals and largely ignore the 30% of plants that are also imperiled.

Native plant conservation is essential if we are to have any chance of surviving the twin catastrophes of climate change and Earth’s sixth mass extinction. Diverse native plant communities are reservoirs of diversity that can help stabilize food and water supplies, preserve and restore the functioning of damaged ecosystems, and even buffer climate change itself.

Your donation will support essential projects, including:

We need up to date tools to upgrade our membership and photo databases, improve our website, host online discussion groups, take better advantage of social media and other functions. We need to update NPCC outreach to reflect current scientific, political and environmental realities, including accelerating climate change and diversity loss. And we need to travel to meet with Affiliates and provide the hands-on interaction with our constituency that is essential to effective organizing.

We are working with local Affiliate groups to identify areas that are particularly important for the conservation of plant diversity in each region of the U.S. The IPA Registry will help guide agencies, land trusts and other land managers in conserving our flora. The Registry will also celebrate the vital work of plant conservation groups in recognizing and protecting these beautiful places.

As habitat loss and climate change accelerate, gardening with locally adapted natives is becoming ever more important in helping to provide habitat, corridors and refugia, for native plants and wildlife. We are aggregating regional tools into an easy to use, national search engine to help gardeners and land managers throughout the U.S. easily to locate and access native plants appropriate to their region and ecosystem.

The Native Plant Conservation Campaign needs your help as we fight to cure “Plant Blindness” and conserve the native plant diversity that we rely upon to support and secure our lives, societies and ecosystems.