Protect Species Podcast
This podcast is a production of the Global Center for Species Survival, which is a partnership between the Indianapolis Zoo and the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC). We record all episodes at the Indianapolis Zoo in the Bedel Financial Media Studio, made possible by a generous gift from Elaine and Eric Bedel.
Protect Species Podcast
Preserving the Oldest Plants on Earth: How We Can Save Cycads
Can you imagine a plant that predates even the dinosaurs, surviving dramatic shifts in our planet's history for 300 million years? Discover the ancient and extraordinary world of cycad plants in our latest episode featuring Dr. John Donaldson from the IUCN SSC Cycad Specialist Group. With fascinating details on their unique reproductive features, including motile spermatozoa and beetle pollination, Dr. Donaldson illuminates why these ancient plants are so biologically unique and why they desperately need our conservation efforts.
Explore the global journey of cycads as we discuss their evolutionary history and geographic spread from Mexico to southern Africa. Learn how their slow growth rates have made them susceptible to competition from faster-growing flowering plants and why innovative strategies are being developed to ensure their survival.
71% of these ancient plants are threatened with extinction. Illegal trade and habitat loss are just a few of the dangers putting cycads at risk. Dr. Donaldson shares the collaborative efforts of the Global Cycad Conservation Coalition, including promising initiatives in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. These efforts, driven by strong relationships with landowners, governments, and NGOs, offer a hopeful outlook for the future of these ancient and irreplaceable plants. Join us as we highlight the urgency and importance of concerted conservation action for cycads.
Links:
IUCN SSC Cycad Specialist Group
Wild Cycad Conservancy
Today we're talking about cycad plants. They shared Earth with the dinosaurs and are now at risk of joining them in extinction. They are ancient, beautiful and threatened. John Donaldson from the IUCN SSC Cycad Specialist Group will talk about what he and others are doing to save these incredible plants. I'm Justin Burkoff.
Speaker 2:And I'm Moni Boehm. Welcome to the Protect Species podcast, where we celebrate biodiversity and converse with conservationists. So, justin sidecats, they're old.
Speaker 1:They are old, like fairly old, like as, like as old as dinosaurs, like that's absolutely wild I know, can you remember them?
Speaker 2:no, but can you totally it was it was a sad day when they went extinct so sad indeed, I am ancient, um, they're also, as you said, they're ancient, beautiful and threatened well, I don't take the threatened, but the beautiful. Sure, I'll take that as well. Threatened well, I don't take the threatened, but the beautiful. Sure, I'll take that as well I'm a psych ad.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm really excited to talk to to our guest today, to dr john, and hear a bit about his involvement. Psych ads learn a bit more about them as plants, because I don't remember my botany that well. Let's be very honest about that about psych ads as plants. I as the thing that they are no, but like what kind of plants they are and why?
Speaker 2:they're unique.
Speaker 1:You're not helpful. You know that. And then learn a little bit more about their conservation and really see kind of what the direction of cycads are Upward, upward, growing wise, towards the sun.
Speaker 2:Towards the sun. Yes, something like that. I don't know. Let's get going. Let's ask John.
Speaker 1:Great to have you here with us today, john. We're going to do it easy. We're going to you know that interview question is could you tell us a little bit about yourself? So, john, who are you, what are you doing and how did you come to be here with us today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, hi Name's John Donaldson. I'm based in Cape Town in South Africa, and I've been involved with cycads for phew since about 1990, when I did my PhD, and much of my career has been working on a range of conservation issues agricultural, land use, invasive species, genetically modified organisms, climate change but right throughout my career I've also had an interest in cycad conservation.
Speaker 2:What are cycads? Tell us.
Speaker 3:They're a super interesting group of plants.
Speaker 2:I hear that ancient is what Justin said.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so they've got this kind of combination of ancient and derived features. Yeah, so they've got this kind of combination of ancient and derived features. So they evolved about 300 million years ago, which means that the oldest living or still living seed plants are predating the flowering plants, predating the dinosaurs, predating many other living things that we share our world with today, but they've survived and they occur in the subtropics and tropical parts of the world. And they occur in the subtropics and tropical parts of the world and they, yeah, they're just really interesting because they have these ancient features, like they have motile spermatozoa, which I'm sure you didn't know.
Speaker 1:No, and can you explain what that is in case, like myself, people don't know what that actually means?
Speaker 2:I'm glad you asked, justin. I was like, come on, go back to botany class. Didn't happen, justin.
Speaker 3:I was like, come on go back to botany class Didn't happen. So in most plants, when the pollen grain lands on the flower, the pollen grain grows straight through and fertilizes the egg In cycads. What happens is the pollen grain gets resorbed into the ovule. It then grows almost like a fungus for a couple of months and then it releases a spermatozoid, so it's a little cell that's got hyphae on it that actually allowed to move. So it then swims into the, the seed and then fertilizes the, the seed that is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a fun fact that I definitely didn't know.
Speaker 2:That's wild, I also also in a little while I'll ask you if you can remember.
Speaker 1:No, I'm not going to you probably won't, but I do know one thing about cycads that I looked up this morning because I don't remember my botany as much as I probably should. Plants are either male or female, which we don't see regularly in the rest of plant life. So how does this influence their life cycle, kind of their longevity, and how does that impact their conservation efforts?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so cycads belong to a group of plants that are called dioecious plants, so the male and female are on separate plants. So many plants will have male and female attributes Are they in the same flower, or they might have male and female on the same plant, but cycads have males and females as separate plants. Where that becomes really important is because then they need to shift the pollen from the male plant to the female plant, and up until 1986, it was considered that all cycads, like most other cone-bearing plants, were wind-pollinated, so wind was the main way of transporting pollen from the male to the female. But in 1986, some scientists working in Florida discovered that actually they were beetles. And now we've worked on numerous species across the world and insect pollination is by far the dominant form of pollen movement for cycads.
Speaker 1:So they are very kind of palm-like, looking right. So there's generally a singular trunk and then these very intricate fan leaf experiences, but they're not related to true palms. How do we tell them? Apart from palms, what are they actually closely related? You mentioned conifers, so I'm assuming you know, or other trees that we're familiar with, you know, or redwoods or pines, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, you're quite right. So palms are completely different. So palms are part of the flowering plants, so they might look fairly similar, but they're actually quite unrelated. The other thing which often a lot of people don't realize, is there's some cycads that do look a lot like palms, but cycads are actually really diverse in their growth form. So you find some that have subterranean stems, some that look like ferns, so quite a few were actually originally described as ferns until they suddenly produced cones, and then people realized they weren't ferns, they were a completely different group of plants. And then you even get one that grows in Panama, which is an epiphyte, so that means it grows up in trees.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's phenomenal. And so there's this really diverse group of how many known species of cycads are there?
Speaker 3:There are around 371 at the moment and that's grown phenomenally in the last couple of years. So when we did the first red list in 2003, there were only 195 known species.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I'm still wondering if our listeners are still frantically sitting at home Googling cycads at this moment in time. Where would our listeners have most come across cycads? Are they used in landscaping, gardening, these kind of things?
Speaker 3:Very commonly used in landscaping. The one that globally that's most common is known as the Sago Palm. So that's a cycads revoluta from Japan, originally from Japan, but if you go to many, many gardens, public gardens, japanese gardens you'll see them. They have a columnar trunk and then this sort of spray of quite fine leaves. If someone lives in Florida, they'll be very familiar with the Zamiya furfurasia, which is used very commonly in landscaping throughout Florida. That's a a low-growing species but forms these sort of dense barriers and borders, so it's used as a border plant in many, many areas.
Speaker 1:And so we see them being used in landscaping. What is their kind of primary role within their native landscapes and their native ecosystems?
Speaker 3:Yeah, many of them are quite rare, so we're still trying to grapple with what they do. But one of the attributes that they do have is they're one of the first plants that had nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots. So they actually have these special cells in their roots and special nodules on the roots called coralloid roots, so they look like corals, these little funny structures that stick up above the ground, and those structures have little cells in them that attract blue-green algae and cyanobacteria and those then fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. So they actually do help to increase the nitrogen content of soil.
Speaker 2:That's super cool and let's talk about. If we don't look at landscaping and gardens, where else would we find these cycads nowadays? Where are they from? Where can you find them Around the world or in particular parts of the world?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so they occur mostly in the tropics and subtropics. So if you kind of took a band around the middle of the world that's kind of where they are you do get ones that occur right into very temperate climates, so the one in Japan, the Sycas Revoluta, and also in parts of China. So they'll occur in areas that have a bit of snow, but mostly in the tropics and subtropics. The real centers of diversity is Mexico has got a very high diversity, australia's got a high diversity and then Southern Africa's got high diversity. But they occur through Vietnam, china, southeast Asia and then in the Americas. There's only one species that occurs into the USA, then Mexico is very rich, and then down to Brazil and Peru and then in Africa. They're in southern Africa and occur right up the east coast and then it's got this weird distribution where they suddenly jump across and there's one species in West Africa.
Speaker 1:Oh, is there any sort of thought as to why that there's that one species that's isolated out on the western coast of the continent?
Speaker 3:we're still trying to grapple with it. Partly it might be that we haven't fully explored parts of West Africa. That's one element, but I still don't think we're going to find a lot there. But there is a band of savannah vegetation that kind of goes across from sort of Kenya, Tanzania and then across Central Africa and into West Africa. So you find a lot in Central Africa and East Africa, but not only this one species so far in West Africa.
Speaker 1:When they first sort of evolved out, they were the more prominent version of flora or plants, and that has changed. What are kind of the causes of that change? Why are we seeing more of the flowering plants become much more of the dominant plant type?
Speaker 3:Yeah, again one of those questions that scientists love asking, which I don't really have definitive answers for. I mean, cycads mostly now occur on more marginal habitats, so competition might well be one of the things that flowering plants just grow faster and are more competitive. I mean cycads just are super slow in most parts. I mean my experience is in Africa where they just really are unbelievably slow. I mean just to give you an example as we've been getting into restoration work, we've been trying to see how do you recover cycad populations, and we always used to say that cycads or thought that cycads had like a generation time of about 25 years, which means from seed to adult in 25 years. Now we've been planting them out as either seedlings or juveniles. We've got juveniles or seedlings that we planted out in 1980, which are still juveniles. So we're sitting 40 years later and they still aren't anywhere near being mature. So they just really are super, super slow.
Speaker 1:I mean that brings an interesting question and kind of circles back. When we talk about the conservation, restoration is obviously a really valuable tool, but when you start talking about long-term strategies you have to talk about project length that may encompass somebody's entire career and that that work is not being realized. You know you could start as a young PhD student wants to figure out why there's a cycad in West Africa and not understand that full experience when you retire. Like how does that change the way that groups are approaching their conservation and their restoration work?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think there are two things to that. The first is we're trying to find ways to speed it up. So we're trying to figure out if we use soil additives, if we irrigate, can we speed up the recruitment process, and the evidence is that we can. Whether with how much we'd still learn Might have to wait another 30 years to see.
Speaker 1:It's all relative right.
Speaker 2:Keeps you in a job?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's true, yeah, the other thing which we're working on at the moment is actually what metrics do we use to measure success? Because if you look like it's the reverse, the red kind of concept, it's about how do you shift something from being so critically endangered to endangered, which means you have to have, you know, at least more than 250 mature adults. So we're trying to see all the other metrics that we can use to give us some sense of how well we're doing. That aren't that complete shift in red list status?
Speaker 1:So does that look at something like the green list status, where we're starting to measure inputs and what that recovery is starting to look like, even if it doesn't match that, you know, the red listing sort of timeline? Is that something that is a valuable tool to really signify that, yes, there's all you know the definition of this species still endangered 20 years on, even though we're doing all these replantings like but there's a measure of all that effort and that this is what we're seeing as recovery, even if it's not necessarily being realized in 250 mature individuals yeah, so the great it is.
Speaker 3:So the green list sort of concept is is really helpful for that. I mean, we still feel that even the green list metrics are are not nuanced enough and fine enough to give us a sense of how well we're doing. But if I give you an example, I've been working on a one called the albany cycad which was down to 40 individuals, and that's just. That is one of the really really slow growing ones. So what we've got now we've put 300 juvenile plants back, but they some of them might well take another 20, 30 years before they're going to be mature. So we are trying these interventions like irrigation and fertilization, so that might push it a little bit, but we need some way of measuring that. We've actually got 300 more plants than we had 10 years ago, but they're just not mature plants.
Speaker 2:This podcast is a production of the Global Center for Species Survival at the Indianapolis Zoo. We record all episodes in the Beadle Financial Media Studio, made possible by a generous gift from Elaine and Eric Beadle. So we've been talking a lot about the Red List already and just a quick shout out. So I do Red List training with folks and I routinely use the SCICAD case study that's in the Red List training materials as one of the case studies for people to start to learn about Red Listing. The most common feedback I get from this is really interesting case study but just so depressing. Oh no, and it truly is. I feel by the time that you go through all of the different criteria that the Red List uses and the people who learn about it come to Criterion D, I think that's the only time that it lists as endangered rather than critically endangered in that case study.
Speaker 1:And then it spells out endangered. What's criterion D for the people that aren't?
Speaker 2:Criterion D is something that's based on a really small population size of a species. But I always find it I weirdly always have to kind of somehow laugh a bit. But it doesn't seem right to do that because endangered E-N, right under D, spells out end, and then we kind of always feel really super depressed. So that's a very long preamble to say what's happening to cycads, because the outlook really isn't that great. And I mean they've been around since you know the dinosaurs, since.
Speaker 1:As long as you have as long as I have.
Speaker 2:yeah, I know I tried to. They've been around since you know the dinosaurs, since as long as you have as long as I have. Yeah, I know I tried to preempt you there again but failed. What's happening to cycads and what are the main threats to them?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's not a pretty picture at the moment, and it hasn't been for at least the last 20 years. So the assessment that we've just finished has concluded that about 71% of all cycads are threatened with extinction, so they fall into one of the IUCN threat categories. Yeah, and quite a large proportion 61 of those are critically endangered. So it's a big chunk of them which are highly threatened and sadly we're also getting to the point where we've now got an increasing number that are extinct in the wild. So of the, the main threats, the, the two biggest threats are habitat loss and illegal trade. So and they tend to be geographically separated. So illegal trade is less of an issue, unless it's not an issue, but it's less of an issue in central and south america. It used to be a big issue in mexico, but somehow the, the, many of the scientists provisions seem to be a big issue in Mexico. But somehow the, the, the mainly the scientist's provisions seem to have worked reasonably well in Mexico.
Speaker 3:In Southern Africa, particularly, the legal trade is by far the biggest issue. Habitat loss is not so much of an issue. And then Southeast Asia is interesting because habitat loss has historically been the main driver, but increasingly we're also seeing illegal trades. There's been lots of illegal trade between countries in Southeast Asia and the only country where it's relatively secure is Australia. So Australia has got some, mainly through land development, where they particularly occur in coastal areas, but it's got the lowest level of threat. So if you look at the threat and status of all the cycads, australia is significantly better off than anywhere else in the world.
Speaker 1:So this illegal trade is wild harvesting and I imagine that really runs back. As you've mentioned, is a very long-lived plant, the maturation process is very, very slow and, as we mentioned earlier, landscaping is a big use for them. So you have all of these things pointed together is like it doesn't make sense necessarily for people to propagate them in this, you know, in that traditional sense, as far as selling them, whereas removing from the wild is much faster and easier. So what I mean? What are we seeing as, like you know, we talk about wildlife trade. We often, you know, generally, talk about mammals, not exclusively, but in birds, like how does, how does wild harvest and illegal trade work with cycads? Like, what are the kind of the avenues that works through?
Speaker 3:or is that not?
Speaker 1:understood.
Speaker 3:It's reasonably understood. But I always am very envious of my colleagues working on particular rhino because they've had so much investment in the intelligence aspect of it, so they know where they're going, what they're doing, what people pay for them. You know some of the conduits with the psych eds. It's just like this big unknown very often. So we kind of have ideas. But um, for example, if you look at southern africa, that's one of the big areas. We think most of the trade probably occurs in South Africa, at least initially. So when people steal a plant from the wild it doesn't go immediately into the international trade, it tends to stay in the local trade. And I think that's where it becomes a bit more complicated, because then it can go through various conduits. The trade can take place over a longer timeframe.
Speaker 1:So, it's much harder to for enforcement to it's almost like it's being laundered internally before it's moved externally.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very much so yeah, and so it's harder to figure out exactly where these conduits are. And I think, when I go back to what I said earlier about Mexico, my sense is that Mexico, a lot of the trade is to the United States, so plants would go out of the wild and almost immediately into trade, international trade, and that seems to have been easier to control and partly, I guess, because the United States has got good enforcement and can capture the plants as they come in, whereas from Southern Africa that just doesn't seem to happen.
Speaker 2:So what are the kind of mechanisms that can be used to tackle this trade? I mean, you mentioned CITES already earlier on. In the Mexican example, cites stands for come on Mon Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora, and should be fungi as well, let's face it. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and and how it's been working in mexico?
Speaker 3:or, if it's, if it's a useful tool for for cycads or yeah, so it's sightings works by initially countries putting forward um particular species to be listed, and they get listed on different appendices. The two most important ones are Appendix 1, where there's no commercial trade allowed, and Appendix 2, where commercial trade is allowed but it's got to be sustainable. So a large majority of the cycle is actually on Appendix 1, which means that there's no commercial trade allowed, and all the cycles from Africa are on Appendix 1. Where CITES works well is if you've got a fairly clear international trade, where the conduits are well known and it's easier to apprehend them. Where it works less well is like the situation in South Africa. So it becomes very complicated and this is something I think that the experience with other animals as well is where you've got a domestic trade and an international trade. It's much more messy and much harder to enforce and much harder for societies to be effective.
Speaker 1:I also imagine, with cycads being a plant that's often misidentified, that that makes that enforcement harder. Right, ivory's ivory there's no questions about what it is generally, but when you're like, is this a fern? Is it not Like there's that sort of that gray area, with identification probably doesn't aid with the enforcement side.
Speaker 3:That's one component of the other side is that mostly when they trade, especially when they trade illegally, all the leaves are cut off. So you just get this bare stem, which could be any number of different taxes. So it's really hard for customs officials to document it or to identify what they are, because it's just the trunk at that point.
Speaker 3:It's just the trunk and you have to wait for the leaves to grow out and then hopefully it survives that process where it's been sent. People often forget when something's apprehended, and particularly if it's an unknown taxon. It has to be then sent to repository where it has to be grown out and looked after and hopefully then identified. And yeah, no, I haven't thought of that that's.
Speaker 1:that's an interesting point, because it is there's like, there's there's a long game to that, and that also implies that you have like, and at that point the animal or the plant has already been removed, right, like the plant is already not in the wild, hopefully it survives long enough, and then hopefully there is a system in place where you're able to hold that person responsible. And we, you know, we see it in illegal wildlife trade and illegal plant trade is the. The consequences of of being caught are not super significant in many ways, in many places. So you know like it's hard to dissuade people through the legislative system because it's still relatively lucrative.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, sometimes the process can have positive spin-offs in a way. Positive spinoffs in a way. So what happened in the late 1990s? There was a big sting operation in the States to try and break a syndicate that was trading illegally in cycads. Nothing really came of the too much of the legal side because it was just before 9-11. So after 9-11, the kind of emphasis shifted more to global terrorism than things like illegal wildlife trade. But what happened is that some of the confiscated plants ended up at the University of California, berkeley's Botanic Garden. And what's happened there is that was a particularly rare species and what's happened there is it's kind of engendered a local interest in that plant and so now we've got a conservation plan for plants in south africa, but linked to university of berkeley. So trying to use what the collection they've got, there's kind of a stimulus to help the conservation in south africa I mean it's a silver lining for a not so great experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so with with this conversation, you know it's really easy to get kind of bogged down in the details and feel like there's not something that you can do. You know we people love plants. You know all of us here have houseplants, right, like, how do we ensure that we are not participating in this illegal trade, even as, you know, as a consumer, like people like psych ads, like how do we make sure that they're being, you know, propagated or that they're sustainable?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think that the two things there. The one is, you know, purchasing plants from recognized nurseries or you know people have got a good reputation. The other easiest way to know that you're not having something that's illegal is to get small plants. So if it's a seedling, the chance of it being wild harvested are really really low. So if you buy a seedling, you've got a good chance that it's a artificially propagated plant. If you buy a bigger plant, there's always the uncertainty about what its origins are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do what I do and just um grow tomatoes.
Speaker 3:That's literally my entire balcony is literally put to one. You miss out all the fun from growing cycads. I know, I'm sure it is fun, but at least I don't have this moral dilemma of maybe doing it wrong right, and tomatoes for everybody.
Speaker 2:Just bring some in the office, so nobody really complains about it. I will once they're all nice and red they're coming up. It's all very good.
Speaker 1:But I think it's you know and cycads are obviously what we're talking about, but I think it's something we need to talk about in general is that there are things that are being removed from the wild and the general consciousness is often about wildlife. It's often about animals, it's birds, it's mammals, those sorts of things but there is pretty rampant trade in plants not just cycads, you know. And so how do we make sure that we're responsible consumers in that space is a little bit harder in many ways because, like you said, it's like you know, people don't want the immature or immature plant to grow Like. They want something that they can put in the yard or they're able to put in their house and it's impressive and it's wonderful. It's like making sure that we're doing this consumption responsibly is really important when we talk about houseplants from around the world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and I think very often the issue is with, particularly with plants, and the wild trade is either its size, so in the case of cycads, people are choosing plants in the wild because it just takes too long to grow them. So that that's one aspect. Um, sometimes it's also about looking for wild features. So some of the succulent plants, if they're grown in the wild, they have these weird distorted stems and that's really hard to get that in artificial propagation.
Speaker 3:So I guess it's almost to discourage people from going for those unusual, old looking stems because they've got unusual old looking stems, stems, because if they've got unusual old-looking stems which look as if they've got insect damage and fire damage, they probably have got that because they're well-harvested. And then sometimes there's also just the fact that they're rare or hard to grow and then nurseries don't have them. So particularly some of your bulbous plants, some of your orchids, people will be looking for those. They're not necessarily going to take a long time to grow or need wild features, but they're just hard to get hold of in the industry. So I think in the case of those orchids, the people know when they're picking them. They know that they're taking a chance. So the average person who goes to buy orchids is not going to be taking that risk.
Speaker 2:Awesome, and we mentioned it earlier on, that you're the co-chair of the IUCN SSC cycad specialist group and your group actually recently received a grant from shout out, the Indianapolis Zoo that will support cycad conservation. Can you tell us a little bit more about the the project?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so one of the things that we're trying to do is the cycad specialist group has been around I've been chair since 1996 but a lot of our work was just all the red listing. So we've done three global red list assessments and so we just felt but kind of what you were alluding to earlier. You know, you just watch these things going extinct, and so we just really, in this next sort of phase of our existence, want to make sure that we move to more action and less just doing the assessment side of things. And what we've done there is we've actually linked up with Botanic Gardens Conservation International to form a group called the Global Conservation Consortium for Psychedisks you thought yours was a mouthful.
Speaker 1:Oh man, yeah, there's so many.
Speaker 2:That says conservation is full of acronyms. Yeah, that's a a mouthful. Oh man. Yeah, there's so many. This is conservation is full of acronyms.
Speaker 3:That's a particular mouthful. Anyway, we just call it GCCC for short.
Speaker 1:GCCC. That's easier, so much easier. I support that.
Speaker 3:But the whole idea there is just mobilizing action in different countries. So what we've been doing is identifying areas where we need a lot of conservation action and where we don't have good groups on the ground, and then just trying to mobilize action. So we've already had one workshop in South Africa, we've got a couple of workshops coming up in Australia. But the other areas that we really are targeting is in Zimbabwe and Mozambique and then also in kind of Central America, so Ecuador, colombia, those areas. So what we were looking for was just funding to get these workshops together and then they linked to field work. So basically the whole idea there is to develop action plans and identify species stewards and species champions in those areas. It was very successful in South Africa and the one that's kind of underway in the planning at the moment in Australia is also looking really good.
Speaker 3:But I'm focusing predominantly on the one in Zimbabwe and Mozambique and what's really exciting is just the enthusiasm from the people involved. So we've got governments, ngos, private landowners, all really really enthusiastic. So we'll be having that workshop in the middle of September to plan for all the species in Mozambique and Zimbabwe and then we'll have a field trip. So there's a whole bunch of cycads that occur on the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe, and then we'll have a field trip. So there's a whole bunch of cycads that occur on the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe, so it's an ideal area for us to go and spend some time work with local stakeholders, try and figure out how we make effective conservation action plans and see what they need to make that work.
Speaker 1:So one thing we've discussed in the past with kind of freshwater conservation is that often it's kind of an afterthought of like well, there's a river there, but because we're protecting the land it'll be okay, and there's not that intentionality. Do you see that with cycad, are we finding protected areas that are gazetted around these strongholds of cycads, as opposed to like, well, there's elephants there, so the cycads will be okay. Is there an intentionality or is that missing? And do you think these workshops will kind of shift that momentum a little bit?
Speaker 3:It's a little bit of both. So I'm a big advocate of protected areas, so I'm not so sure we should only focus on the species side of things kind of protected areas. So you know, not so say we should only focus on the species side of things. But sometimes there's a. You can be a little bit misled to thinking that because psychics occur in a protected area they're okay and often they're not, sometimes because there's not enough enforcement. So there's still ongoing illegal trade, sometimes for ecological reasons they continue to decline. So they do need a bit more intentionality, even in the inner protected area.
Speaker 3:But there are actually quite a lot of reserves globally which are specifically for cycads, and that's across the world. So China's got I can't remember how many, but there's certainly quite a few for species like Cycus panzeriensis, which occurs up in the mountains, chengdu. That's got its own reserve. In South Africa we've got two or three that are just for cycads. Mexico has got a few. So they are a mix. Sometimes they're in bigger protected areas, sometimes they've got their own protection and they do vary quite a lot in terms of their effectiveness. You can't just leave the cycads to be there. Ecologically they need quite a lot of attention, particularly when the population is really small.
Speaker 1:I think one of the things that kind of connects to that, as you mentioned earlier, is that the belief was until the mid-'90s that they were being pollinated through wind movement and that's really not the case. It's very much beetle, it's very much invertebrate-led. Are we seeing issues with these? Everyone's dancing because the mammal guy is talking about invertebrate.
Speaker 2:I was dancing because you mentioned the beetles again.
Speaker 1:Oh no, but like are we seeing issues with cycad, like long-term sustainability of these populations, as some of these invertebrate populations are disappearing or declining? How does that fit into the action planning and is that a concern?
Speaker 3:It's actually a huge concern, something we've become aware of much more in the last couple of years. So what we've been finding is that as populations decline, the insects just disappear completely. So if you get populations of cycads that are fewer than, say, 100 individuals, very often the beetles have disappeared completely, and even in some bigger populations. So we've got one species which has got about 600 plants left mature plants but we can't find pollinators on that one. And in Australia there's one which is actually a couple of hundred thousand plants where the insects seem to be declining. So it does seem to be a bit of a global phenomenon, but it's much more intense and much more problematic in some of these species that have dwindled down to, say, 10 or 15 individuals.
Speaker 3:So we've got a whole area of research at the moment trying to figure out firstly, how specialised the pollinators are, because some of them are pretty specialised, and then also what can we do?
Speaker 3:Can we somehow resurrect the pollinator interactions? So many, in fact most psychics globally have got at least two different beetle species on them and some seem to be more specific than others, have got at least two different beetle species on them and some seem to be more specific than others. But the taxonomy is still kind of this big mess so we're still trying to figure out what it is. But yeah, because really I mean there's just a whole cool area of research on cycad pollination because you know, what we've discovered is that they've got these very tight brood site mutualisms and they're also attracted to the cones by very specific volatile odors. So what we're trying to figure out is can we find species that have got similar volatile odors and shift beetles between them? Can we find ones that are closely related to the beetle shift between them? So we've actually got are closely related to the beetle shift between them. So we've actually got a postdoctoral student at the moment looking at that, trying to see to what extent we can recover these pollinator mutualisms.
Speaker 2:That's so cool. That's fascinating. Our producer, kelly, is starting to wave at us to start wrapping up this podcast and her message to us is let's wrap up with something hopeful. I'm also really keen on this. Let's wrap up with something hopeful because I might be able to use that the next time I do Red List training and everybody gets depressed about the PSYCAD case study. Are there any signs of hope for PSYCADs? Is there a favorite PSYCAD story that you like to bring out when everybody's a little bit doomy and gloomy?
Speaker 3:Well, I think there are a couple of things. So one, the Red List Index over the three timeframes so 2003, 2010, and 2022, does show a change in the trajectory of quite a few of them, so particularly the Mexican species. So Ceratizamia and Diyun, both have shown at least a flattening of the curve, and we think that's partly to do with biosphere reserves and also the decreasing trade. So that's a really positive one. And then, I think, these recovery plans. So we've now got actual active recovery and reintroductions for at least 16 species going at the moment and, as I said, it might be slow, so we're not going to see that shift in the red list just yet, but we're certainly seeing the numbers going up. So I think those are really positive stories. And in terms of securing areas, again we're making good progress on that, working with donors and funders and trying to secure different species. So, yeah, I'm actually quite encouraged.
Speaker 1:For the first time in probably 30 years, I think we really are moving into a time of action and trying to shift it into a more positive and, as you mentioned, you know, like with Zimbabwe and Mozambique in particular, like there's this huge collaborative effort between private land ownership, governments, ngos, and this sense of enthusiasm and excitement about, oh, we're building a plan that we can enact.
Speaker 1:And so I think one of the things we talk about in conservation is that it's like without a plan, it's just kind of an idea, right, like, and plans allow for action, allow for hope, and I think when we start, it's really easy to really focus on the action portion and not realize that, in order to get to that part, there's all of these other things that come in place. And to see the excitement and enthusiasm that you mentioned for some of these plants and regions where they haven't necessarily existed before. I think that is, you know, 30 years of maturation, right, but like that sets us in the right direction in order to continue that. You know that excitement and that recovery 30 years of maturation, right, but like that sets us in the right direction in order to continue that. You know that excitement in that recovery 30 years of maturation and I'm going yeah and absolutely.
Speaker 3:And I think also what I've also realized it sometimes takes a long time to mature those relationships in order to do that. So, you know, we built up relationships with landowners, built up relationships with government and and some of those have taken I mean, the Albany SciCAD, from where I started in 2006 with the IUCN's conservation planning specialist group yes, the CPSG now, yeah, yeah, finally in 2021 is when we got to reintroducing plants, but it was just building up relationships, building up the kind of conservation plants everyone could buy into. So, yeah, you're right. So, I think, building up those relationships and now we're kind of mobilizing those relationships to get the action happening and I'm very encouraged and confident that we're going to change the trajectory of decline.
Speaker 1:That sounds fantastic, that's wonderful.
Speaker 2:It's a marathon, not a sprint, specifically for psychads. No, that's wonderful. Thank you so much, john, and thanks for ending on this note of hope for these wonderful plants.
Speaker 1:And we appreciate your time and learning about a family of plants that I didn't know that much about.
Speaker 3:Well, thanks for the opportunity to share. It's been good to be here.
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