[PCA] Cost of Producing Natives (fwd)

[Steve Erickson]

That's rather a blanket statement. And if a goal is to have
community based restoration so the community undertakes
additional restoration and  defends the restorations from
development later,, it seems counter productive to rely on
"Clonal Plants are Us, Inc." Local specialist nurseries that care
about genetics, etc. and locally based salvage programs also
build local capacity to undertake and support restoration when
the grants are gone.

Its always been my understanding that laboratory clonal
propagation (i.e. tissue culture) gets very expensive if diverse
parents are used.

And even for clonal plants, I'm not sure that they're
necessarily cheaper. What would it cost to produce 1000
cloned Salix large enough to use for live stakes or brush
wattles? 
 -Steve
 
> The members of the PCA list have made some valid points on
both sides, however the cost factor is based on the
production of plants by traditional methods eg. cuttings which
must be rooted. I would encourage those of you who are
looking to cut the per unit cost of either natives  or exotics,
to look into the utilization of biotechnology firms that can
mass produce thousands of plants in a relatively short period
at a fraction of the cost of those by traditional methods.
> Regards,
> J.N.Covanes
> Director of Research
> Botresearch USA

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Frosty Hollow Ecological Restoration
“Helping Nature Heal”
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