Australia

Northern Territory

Debbie Randall and Michiel van Slageren collecting on Helen Station near Tennants Creek, NT

(Photo: Tim Collins)

In late November 2004 the Northern Territory of Australia (NT) and the State of Tasmania joined the Millennium Seed Bank Project. Not that the two regions could be any more different in flora and geography. Our main partner in the NT is the Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts (NRETA), who have provided the infrastructure to establish a Seed Bank at the Alice Springs Desert Park (ASDP) as well as hosting the personnel involved and helping the project through contributions in kind. Indispensable assistance is provided by the taxonomists of the Northern Territory Herbarium branch at the Alice Springs Desert Park. At a later stage the Palmerston North branch of the Herbarium near Darwin will be involved when exploration of the Territory will start including the so-called Top End – the more humid-tropical, northernmost one third of the NT. The main thrust of the partnership will focus at the southern two thirds of the NT with its archetypal Australian “outback” mountains, deserts and steppes.

MacDonnell Ranges, west of Alice Springs Northern Territory

(Photo: K. Baker)

This partnership is one of seven Australian partnerships in the Millennium Seed Bank Project (MSBP); the project is foreseen to last for six years and targets the ex situ conservation of an overall 550 species.

The main purpose of the project is to support plant conservation in the NT. This will be done through complementing existing in situ plant conservation activities by establishing a program of increased seed collection for targeted species, and undertaking research to understand the germination and long-term storage requirements for seed of collected species. Three key outputs have been formulated to address the project purpose, viz. (1) the establishment of a well-documented collection of seed of wild native NT species based in Alice Springs and, in parallel, at the MSB; (2) the development of a research programme, and (3) the creation of opportunities for staff training and development to strengthen the capacity of the NT Government to continue its endeavour to maintain an effective ex situ program after the joint project ends.

The rare Solanum orbiculatum

(Photo: K. Baker)

As to the targeted species there will be special emphasis on the 635 endemic and 476 threatened ones, found in an overall NT flora of around 4200. The project expects to discover and conserve several species that are new to science in the course of the six years. Once collected and conserved research on selected species will then focus on, among others, development of methods to overcome dormancy, soil seed bank studies, and documentation of morphological seed features and of indigenous knowledge. On this latter aspect it is foreseen that the project will extensively engage with the Aboriginal communities who form a significant part of the inhabitants of the NT. Students from, among others, the Charles Darwin University in Darwin are foreseen to be engaged in the research programme.