Indigenous seeds, crucial to tackling climate change, are becoming scarce: NPR

Seeds are seen as students at Eucalyptus Elementary School in Hawthorne, California learn how to plant a vegetable garden March 13, 2019. The U.S. supply of native seeds is currently too low to respond to events related to climate change, according to a new report finds.

David McNew/AFP via Getty Images

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David McNew/AFP via Getty Images

Seeds are seen as students at Eucalyptus Elementary School in Hawthorne, California learn how to plant a vegetable garden March 13, 2019. The U.S. supply of native seeds is currently too low to respond to events related to climate change, according to a new report finds.

David McNew/AFP via Getty Images

In the wake of wildfires, floods and droughts, restoring damaged landscapes and habitats requires native seeds. The United States does not have enough, according to a report released Thursday.

“Time is running out to bank the seeds and genetic diversity our lands hold,” the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) report said.

As climate change worsens extreme weather events, the damage caused by these events will become more severe. This, in turn, will create an increased need for native seeds – which have adapted to their local environment over thousands of years – for restoration efforts.

But the report found that the country’s supply of native seed is already insufficient to meet the needs of agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which is the biggest buyer of native seed and commissioned the study in 2020. This lack of supply presents significant barriers to current and future restoration efforts.

“Federal land management agencies are unprepared to provide the native seeds needed to respond to the increasing frequency and severity of wildfires and the impacts of climate change,” the report concludes. Changing that will require “a broad proactive effort,” including regional and national coordination, he said.

In a statement, BLM said federal agencies and their partners have been working to increase native seed supply for many years. The office said it was reviewing the report’s findings.

The report’s recommendations “represent a significant opportunity for us to make our collective efforts more effective,” said BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning.

Although native plants are best for habitat restoration, lack of supply means restoration efforts often use non-native substitutes. They are cheaper and easier to find, but they are not locally adapted.

“Without native plants, especially their seeds, we lack the ability to restore functioning ecosystems after natural disasters and mitigate the effects of climate change,” BLM said.

Some private companies produce native seeds, but this requires specialized knowledge and equipment. On top of that, they often lack start-up seeds and demand is inconsistent – ​​agencies are making purchases in response to emergencies with timelines that businesses deem unrealistic. Proactive restoration of public lands could help reduce this uncertainty and tension, the report recommends.

In order to sufficiently increase seed supply, the report concluded that BLM also needed to improve its seed warehouse system, which “will soon be insufficient in terms of climate-controlled physical capacity, personnel and expertise.” There are currently two major warehouses with a combined capacity of 2.6 million pounds, with limited cold storage space.