FAQ: How often/how long should I monitor my reintroduction?

[Center for Plant Conservation]

[Center for Plant Conservation]

Consider your reintroductions as a long-term commitment. Plan to monitor them for a minimum of 5-10 years and ensure agreements are in place with land managers to accomplish this goal. Monitoring plans should begin with a basic understanding of your plant’s life history (life span, growing season, flowering/fruiting season, seedling emergence, etc.). Local climate and weather patterns and changes thereof should be considered when timing the monitoring. Look for other factors such as herbivory, vandalism, invasive species, etc., that may influence monitoring/aftercare frequency. In general, visiting more frequently after your planting is recommended to foster establishment, but can later be reduced based on the expected dynamics of the population. Initial frequent (monthly) monitoring should help you learn about population dynamics if these are not already understood and can help you make decisions on the frequency of future visits. For example, observed plants with highly variable flowering times and seedling recruitment may require more frequent monitoring to understand true population dynamics, while species with strict annual flowering seasons may only require one visit. Slow growing, long-lived species -once established- often can be monitored annually or less.

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