Brief review on the NZPCN Conference
The New Zealand Plant Conservation Network conference (which took place in the second week of October, in Christchurch) provided a wide range of interesting presentations on subjects ranging from the more scientific end, to the place of plants within gardens.
Philip Smith presented a paper for the conference, entitled 'The Missing Link : Between propagation and cultivation'. This concerned challenges and techniques for bringing a wider range of threatened species through into gardens. There are several nurseries that are actively concerned with advocacy for the threatened flora, but which receive a lack of support and follow-through from the landscape/garden industry. Therefore, bridging this gap through paradigm shifts in the design of gardens was the matter at hand within Philip's talk. He also discussed means of communicating about the threatened flora.
The two major highlights of the conference for us were the talks of Colin Meurk and Alan Mark (who delivered the 'Tane Ngahere' lecture). Colin's presentation regarded a fascinating field, in which we have always been interested. Colin described a category of landscapes called 'recombinant ecosystems'. These are effectively hybrid landscapes, in which elements of indigenous ecologies endure (sometimes in different roles to how they may have occupied the pre-human landscape), and introduced vegetation or production systems are acknowledged as having become an intrinsic part of the landscape. These are new types of stable ecologies (or semi-stable, as they are often held in place by potentially transient human factors), that can provide the basis for conservation models that are able to engage with the human landscape.
This also makes what we consider to be an essential concession - that a huge number of our landscapes have become profoundly modified, and that we need to stop viewing this solely as an affront to our native vegetation and ecologies, and look for the opportunities, beauty and new characters that have arisen within these novel environments.
Too often, conservation harks back to a primeval model, that attempts to return things to an ancestral state, even where this state has perhaps become untenable. The primeval model works where land adjoins areas that are still in a relatively intact natural state (and where successional stages are occupied and driven by native species). However, it fails in many of our landscapes, by not acknowledging and embracing the dynamism of landscapes.
Indeed, some threatened species can find significant opportunities in profoundly modified landscapes, and a return to a primeval state can (in some cases) disadvantage them. Colin's work on this field is an outstanding example of a creative application of an objective (and ironically optimistic) view; and can, in part, be considered in the same tradition as the remarkable record that Herbert Guthrie-Smith laid down in his groundbreaking environmental work, 'Tutira'.
In his lecture, Professor Alan Mark gave an extremely interesting account of conservation in some of New Zealand's undervalued ecologies; indigenous grasslands used for pastoral farming. This was an inspiring presentation which gave an insight into the creation of many important national parks within the South Island, over the last 30 years. Professor Mark's approach was especially notable for his ability to give a balanced viewpoint, while not compromising what is important. His research on the water-holding capacity (and gradual release) of indigenous grasslands is particularly fascinating, and one of the best-considered, most convincing cases of a type of benefit that scientists refer to as 'ecosystem services' (the tangible - albeit often over a long period - benefits that certain ecologies can deliver).
For anybody interested in the Network, or its excellent online resource of information on native plants, please visit www.nzpcn.org.nz.