National Seed Conference 2025 Takeaways, Reflections and Ideas
Mele Avery, CoNPS Restoration Committee Chair
The 2025 National Native Seed Conference, coordinated by the Institute for Applied Ecology, was held in Tucson, Arizona in late February. When the conference was being organized, and even as late as when I registered in December of 2024, none of us could have predicted the reality we’d be faced with by the time the event came around. The cruel and short-sighted cuts to essential staff, budgets, and entire departments (which still continue) levelled against our public lands were quite evident in the form of about 100 missing participants and the general gallows humor of those who still managed to attend. The opening plenary speakers barely held back tears as they recounted all the ways in which this was not the conference they expected. Presenters from federal agencies became cagey when I asked for their slides, afraid their nonpartisan scientific findings would somehow be used against them.
The opening speakers included Dr. Don Falk, Professor of Natural Resources at the University of Arizona, who specializes in fire history and resilience ecology. His presentation on the concept of resilience rather than restoration ecology was timely. Mirroring our burned forests, we now face a choice of how to reorganize our restoration ecosystem in the face of indiscriminate destruction. The concepts of resilience and reorganization are suddenly relevant to more than just our plant communities. He shared the following image from his research, and invited us to consider where we were in this disturbance timeline. At the end of the conference, Dr. Tom Kaye, founder of the Institute for Applied Ecology revisited this idea in his closing remarks. He encouraged us to continue our important work and bring about the healing the world needs, ecologically and interpersonally. For myself, the conference solidified my commitment to native plants and seed-based restoration in the United States. There is still much good work to be done, together, for our public lands.
Stay tuned for more takeaways from the conference, including the latest research and native seed initiatives, to appear in a future edition of Aquilegia.
