Over the past three years the teams have painstakingly collected and stored six tonne of seed so it can be ready to grow our nationally distinctive, but highly vulnerable, Alpine and Mountain Ash forests after fire or disturbance.
Collection of the seed will continue for three more years and is part of the Forest Restoration Project, one of the largest forest restoration efforts in Victoria following the 2019/20 fires.
The fires burned 83,000 ha of fire sensitive Alpine and Mountain Ash forest across state forest and National Park, creating concern that without action they could become locally extinct.
Although our eucalypts look the same, each part of the forest has a unique seed type.
Specialist seed sourcing and climbing crews have worked across the High Country areas each season, collecting from a range of areas and seed provenances, in both National Parks and State forest.
I haven’t heard of this before. Is this a more common practice for forestry services?
Eucalyptus seed stores for a long time, and is kept by collection lot (either private or governmental). You can buy seeds here from studied lots from our government research group if one was so inclined, you just pay them to open the lot.
The trees they are collecting for aren’t fire-resistant and they are getting burnt more often so this would be insurance for the areas they are collecting from.
deleted by creator
