Building Biodiversity in the Face of Climate Change through Native Plant Conservation

As climate change continues to influence ecosystems, arboreta and botanical gardens are often faced with the challenge of developing strategic plans that can ensure native plant conservation for years into the future. Extreme weather conditions are now well-known and many impacts are already evident. Arboreta and other public gardens provide an ideal setting in which horticulture, conservation, operations and strategic direction can synergize to increase resilience in living collections, land management and support of wildlife. The Dawes Arboretum located near Newark, Ohio is developing a sustainable way forward, despite these changes, through planning, conservation practices and ecological research. Established in 1929, The Dawes Arboretum founders sought to encourage the planting of forest and ornamental trees, for practical and scientific evaluation purposes, with a particular emphasis and interest in the growth of plants “able to support the climate of the state of Ohio”. In light of anticipated climate changes, the Arboretum is implementing native tree plantings aimed at reforesting exhausted agricultural soils and revegetating working lands with diverse native prairie. Basing species selection on current publications, both climate hardy and climate sensitive species are being evaluated in natural areas. As well, the nearly 17,000 labeled specimens in living collections are being closely monitored for decline and vigor in order to direct future plantings. As a strategic conservation goal, plant exploration and seed collections of native plants are being made throughout southern ecotype ranges, as a form of assisted migration and genetic repository. Genetic adaptations to ecotypes from these regions will likely mimic that of our area in the future out performing what is now the local ecotypical forms. Seeds are then banked, propagated or shared with other institutions as a multi-pronged approach to distributing plant material. Living field genebanks then serve to preserve rare and threated species for future restoration potential. As a means to further increase engagement, garden directors have placed priorities on raising conservation awareness through citizen science to grow institutional support. Learning from this process, the Arboretum has gradually undertaken a new paradigm in order to have the flexibility and adaptability to weather the changing climate of Ohio to build resilience into the future and benefit ecosystems as a whole. Underpinning this strategy, is the goal to increase biodiversity and enhance habitat for wildlife populations, while enriching people’s lives and growing a love of the natural world.