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WILDERNESS FEATURE
BEHIND THE NEWS Throughout this year, the Environment Committee has been working with endangered plants native to our Crawford campus and its surrounding area. We have worked predominantly on the critically endangered Spyridium fontis-woodii or Woods Well Spyridium. Before we started working with this plant, there were only 11 plants left in the wild. We have now managed to grow several plants to maturity; we hand-pollinated half of these, collected their flowers, sorted the seeds and have grown a whole new generation of Spyridium. We now have more plants in a single container than what was in the wild when we started, and hundreds of germinated seeds overall. We hope to be able to plant these at Crawford when they have grown enough. We were recently featured on ABC’s Behind the News (BTN). This was a really exciting experience as it allowed us to share our progress with the wider community. We hope that through raising awareness for native plants, more people will be inclined to help them in the future. Our BTN segment can be found at: www.abc.net.au/btn/classroom/ threatened-flora/12625656 Inika Weber Environment Committee
