Member for Lismore Thomas George has announced a new project to better understand the genetic makeup of the last remaining nine plants of the endangered Bolivia Hill Pimelea.
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“The Bolivia Hill Pimelea was once widespread on the Northern Tablelands, but today no wild population of this threatened species is known to exist,” Mr George said.
Nine surviving individual plants of the Bolivia Hill Pimelea successfully germinated and grew from a small population of this species found in 2012 near Tenterfield, before this population also declined to extinction.
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Clones of these nine plants have been growing in several breeding facilities – including the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Australian National Botanic Gardens – as part of a conservation project for this species under the NSW Government’s Saving our Species program.
This new project will see $6500 of funding provided to carry out a range of genetic testing on these nine remaining individual Bolivia Hill Pimelea plants.
“The funding will allow genetic testing and analysis to be done to determine how closely related the nine individuals are to each other and to previous populations of this shrub,” Mr George said.
“Results from the genetic analysis will guide the design and implementation of future conservation actions needed to help recover this species, including translocation of the species back into the wild.”
Securing this species back in the wild relies on the successful re-establishment of genetically diverse populations and the development of techniques to encourage growth of seedlings
The Bolivia Hill Pimelea is an up-right shrub with small white flowers, commonly known as a ‘rice-flower’.
The NSW Government has invested $100 million over five years in the Saving our Species program which aims to secure as many threatened species as possible in the wild for the next 100 years.
