Project Profile: Increase Native Seed Production for 14 California Parks

Harvesting seed in Yosemite National Park

NPS Photo

Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
National Seed Strategy | FY22 $240,000

The National Park Service is collaborating with a range of partners to increase regional production capacity for appropriate native plant seed to restore native coastal prairies, interior grasslands and wet meadows, habitat for threatened and endangered species, and provide capacity for post-fire recovery. This project includes support for nursery operations at four national parks, development of a strategy to increase seed supply for the Golden Gate area parks, provides funding for growing and purchasing additional seed for fire impacted parks in the Klamath Region, and provides funding to support the establishment of seed production fields to support restoration work in four parks.

Why? Increasingly frequent and intense fires, changing land use, increases in invasive species distribution, and climate change are increasing demand for native seed needed to restore California’s diverse and varied landscape, which is identified as a global biodiversity hotspot. Effective restoration requires locally adapted and regionally grown native plant materials that are produced at a large enough scale to meet developing park needs.

What Else? There is a complex history of traditional use and management of plants by Indigenous people in California that was interrupted and dramatically altered over the last 170 years. Indigenous management of the landscape combined with the biogeographic isolation afforded by the Sierra Nevada and Pacific Ocean have influenced the unique evolutionary trajectory of California plants and vegetation communities.

Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – Ecosystem Restoration

This project was made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – Ecosystem Restoration, signed on November 15, 2021. It is a historic investment in the restoration and protection of the environment.