From Mojave Desert Land Trust:
RSVP HERE.

Join us for a special evening exploring the need for seed banking. Patrick Emblidge, Seed Program Manager at the Mojave Desert Seed Bank, will guide participants on an educational journey into the importance of seed banking for the protection of Mojave Desert flora. He will discuss the foundational importance of plants to the ecosystem, plant restoration, and explain the details and ethics of seed banking.

The talk and Q&A will be followed by a short tour of the Mojave Desert Seed Bank.

Seed banking is an insurance policy for the future. The Mojave Desert Seed Bank is operated by the Mojave Desert Land Trust in Joshua Tree. It is a living repository of the Mojave and Colorado Deserts, with millions of seeds safe for decades to come and available for restoration and research. There are over 800 seed collections representing over 200 taxa, including 10 species of special concern.

This is a free event. Donations are welcome. This talk is held in honor of Audrey W Rottman.

About the speaker:

Patrick Emblidge is the Seed Program Manager of the Mojave Desert Seed Bank in Joshua Tree. He is an ecologist with a passion for understanding and conserving the flora, fauna, and habitats of arid lands. His introduction to the Mojave Desert was during his master’s degree program, studying Gila monster habitat suitability and thermal ecology in the red cliffs of southwestern Utah. Following his graduate program, he spent 8 years at the U.S. Geological Survey in Las Vegas primarily focused on desert tortoise movement ecology and contact network research. Before joining the Mojave Desert Land Trust, he studied restoration and native vegetation of the shrub-steppe and was the data manager for the Northwest Bat Hub in Oregon.