Seeds for Success: a forum on revegetation and climate change

Dr Elisa Raulings explains why Seeds for Success was an important event for the future of habitat restoration.

Habitat Restoration is an exciting science for everyone here at Greening Australia. We’re keen to underpin all our restoration efforts with evidence-based decision making, and it all starts with choosing the best seed for the job.

BUT- dwindling seed supplies, poor seed quality and changing climates are a tangled web for my colleagues and I in the restoration industry. With short project timelines and tight funding the norm, we don’t always have the time or money to reflect on best practice seed collection and update our practices as threats such as climate change emerge. We need to start thinking about alternative ways we can secure the seed supply chain in the presence of climate change.

As such we were very excited to have secured funding from the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation to run our Seeds for Success forum, and even more excited that so many scientists, planners, funding agencies and restoration practitioners came along to share their expertise. We are a privileged lot – the people enabling the creation of future resilient forests, saving species and planning for climate change – and together we will make sure every seed counts.

The forum was held on 9 July 2015, hosted and sponsored by La Trobe University.Thank you to Dr Susan Hoebee from the Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution for helping organise the event.

Elisa’s role at Greening Australia is to build our relationship with Parks Victoria, and to integrate evidence-based decision making into Greening Australia’s activities. 

Forum presentations

• Victoria’s Climate Futures: The context for strategy (Lesley Hughes)
• Securing the seed supply chain (Dr Linda Broadhurst)
• Climate adaptation and provenance choice for revegetation – Insights from Eucalyptus(Brad Potts)
• Maintaining adaptation in revegetated landscapes (Ary Hoffmann, Rebecca Jordan)

More presentations from the event will be uploaded soon.