Geographic Consulting Appears in the March USDA – NRCS newsletter

The USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service has just released the March, 2013 issue of their newsletter. Geographic Consulting and our work on assessing endangered plants of St. Croix get a nice mention on page 2. You can download a copy of the publication here. http://www.pr.nrcs.usda.gov/news/pubs/NRCS_CBNewsletter_Mar2013_web.pdf

Since the day we collected field data on Catesbaea melanocarpa, a wildfire swept through the Ha’ Penny Beach area, burning some plants, singeing others but, leaving most individuals unharmed. We hope to get a combination of public and private funding to: 1)  finish the survey of this population, 2) re-assess the known population after the fire, 3)  monitor how the plants recover from fire and, 4) execute a combination of on-site and off-site conservation measures. You can read more about this project and others from our publications page.

We would also like to thank Michael Morgan, of the University of the Virgin Islands, Agricultural Experiment Station and David Hamada of the St. George Village Botanical Garden for volunteering their expertise in field data collection and a special thanks to David for his editorial contributions on this blog post 😉

The population of Catesbaea melanocarpa are producing ripe fruit and seedlings were found below parent plants. This is one encouraging sign for a population at risk