Native Plant Conservation Campaign News: Florida newspaper covers NPCC Director’s presentation to Florida Native Plant Society conference
June 30, 2018
This is a very nice concise look at some challenges faced by native plants and how the NPCC fights for plants and the people who conserve them!
Palmer: Stop and take a look at the plants around you
Posted May 26, 2018 at 5:54 PM Updated May 26, 2018 at 5:54 PM
Do you suffer from plant blindness?
Many people do.
Happily this affliction is curable without the need for pharmaceuticals.
The cure is education.
The term was coined 20 years ago to describe “the inability to see or notice the plants in one’s own environment, leading to the inability to recognize the importance of plants in the biosphere and in human affairs.”
It has also been used to describe the inability of people to appreciate the aesthetics of plants or the tendency to rank the ecological importance of plants below that of animals.
Put another way, when was the last time you generated oxygen or food?
Plants do this all of the time.
They also provide habitat for a variety of wildlife, buffer the effects of coastal storms and help to remove pollutants from water as it moves across the landscape.
I learned about this issue at the Florida Native Plant Society’s annual conference in Miami.
This botanical slight even carries into the Endangered Species Act.
Let me give you some local examples to illustrate this.
When Polk County needed to expand the ponds for its Sun Ray sewer plant near Frostproof a few years ago, the project cost included buying $377,982 in mitigation credits because the pond site in scrub habitat along the Lake Wales Ridge is home to sand skinks, a small lizard classified as threatened under the federal law.
When CSX was building its Winter Haven logistics center, the environmental review turned up the presence of a previously unknown population of McFarlin’s lupine, which is classified as an endangered species that is much rarer than sand skinks. It is found only in a few spots on the Winter Haven and Mt. Dora ridges in Polk and Orange counties.
Although CSX officials graciously allowed the staff from Bok Tower Gardens’ rare plant conservation program to collect seeds from the plants, the company was not required to pay a dime for mitigation and was legally allowed to bulldoze the plants to make way for its project.
The leaders of the Native Plant Conservation Campaign are trying to improve protection of imperiled native plants, arguing there is no logical reason to treat endangered plants any differently from endangered animals.
The campaign’s organizers are also working with native plant societies all over the country to raise awareness of this issue through such measures as encouraging research to identify significant natural areas that would be classified as Important Plant Areas.
In addition, they are working with Congress to increase funding for botanical programs aimed at preventing rare, native plants from becoming endangered, restoring native plant communities and combating the spread of invasive plant species, which displace native plants.
Legislation, HR 1054, was introduced in Congress last year to address the funding issue. Its 23 co-sponsors include Florida U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Brian Mast and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
