Conference 2003
Greening the City:
Bringing Biodiversity Back
into the Urban Environment
Abstract:
Saving
Threatened Native Plant Species in Cities:
from Traffic Islands to Real Islands
John Sawyer (Department of Conservation, Wellington)
While offshore islands
offer a more traditional option for native plant conservation in
New Zealand, traffic islands and road reservations are now being
used in the Wellington region as an integral part of plant species
recovery projects.
Urban environments offer
areas of public land where plants can be grown on a long-term basis.
In the past, mainly exotic plants have been used but in Wellington,
threatened native plants are now being used. If a council must vegetate
its urban areas then why not use native plant species, and especially
threatened species, so that the plantings can contribute to protecting
New Zealand's unique plant life.
Threatened native plants
grown in traffic islands are used as:
- Insurance populations
in case the wild population is destroyed;
- A research and educational
resource;
- A source of seeds
and plants to be used in species recovery work in the wild.
Threatened plant species
grown in traffic islands can be valuable components of a plant conservation
programme but can also be attractive parts of the urban landscape.
The islands are well protected by the roads that surround them.
Browsing animals, such as possums, are unable to access them and
council staff keep the islands free of weeds.
This paper describes
some examples of threatened species programmes in Wellington that
rely on urban ex-situ management of threatened plants. This paper
also describes how ex-situ plant conservation in Wellington is tied
in with island restoration programmes.
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