One of the world’s biggest threats is right here in our own backyard. South Australia is home to incredible plant life – much of it found nowhere else on Earth.
But many of these plants are at threat of disappearing. To put this into numbers, there are 830 South Australian plants that we are at risk of losing forever. That’s one third of our state’s native flora.
Let that sink in.
Why it matters
When plant species are lost, entire ecosystems begin to break down.
Plants are the foundation of life. They:
The opportunity
Collecting and storing seeds allows us to:
One fine example of the South Australian Seed Conservation Centre’s work is in the restoration of Kangaroo Island following the devastating bushfires of 2019-20. Read more here and here.
South Australian Seed Conservation Centre
The Centre has built a seed bank containing seeds for around 85% of our threatened plants, most of those that can be collected.
It’s vital we keep going, as many of these are from a single location or are very small collections.
Add to this, we’re seeing other species become rarer in the bush.
The time to act is now
Record events over the last decade like fires, floods and storms have caused impacts to our threatened plants. We have a ‘window of opportunity’ now to collect viable seeds for our seed bank to protect these species for their future survival.
If we don’t act now, we won’t have the plants to rescue in the coming years.
What you can do
This is a pivotal moment to secure our shared ecosystem for the long-term. We have a collective opportunity – and responsibility – to act.
We invite everyone to contribute what they can through a fortnightly donation or one-off gift to help drive this mission forward. The more support we have, the more seed from threatened native plants we can collect.
Donate today. Every seed counts.
