{"id":264813,"date":"2025-11-01T11:15:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T11:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/264813\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T11:15:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T11:15:07","slug":"gumnuts-baby-how-two-abseiling-horticulturalists-rescued-specimens-from-an-endangered-tree-wildlife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/264813\/","title":{"rendered":"Gumnuts, baby! How two abseiling horticulturalists rescued specimens from an endangered tree | Wildlife"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Two horticulturalists have undertaken a daring abseiling mission to rescue gumnuts from an endangered tree on a 300m cliff face.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Stan Wawrzyczek, a threatened flora ecologist at the Threatened Species Conservancy, spotted an endangered tree, Eucalyptus stenostoma (Jillaga Ash), 90m down the cliff in Wadbilliga national park in southern New South Wales.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Coincidentally, he had heard that Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (RBGV) horticulturist Amy Downie could abseil \u2013 she cared for the RBGV\u2019s Grey Garden, which has hard-to-reach plants on a steep slope.<\/p>\n<p>Ollie Sherlock and Amy Downie Photograph: Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">She was roped in, along with her colleague Ollie Sherlock, rock climber, abseiler and acting team leader for natural systems.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cThe abseiling site had never been descended before,\u201d Downie said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cWe had to tie two ropes together because they weren\u2019t long enough.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/email-newsletters?CMP=copyembed&amp;CMP=emailbutton\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The pair collected gumnuts from four trees using a pole pruner. They will be used to grow seedlings to create back-up populations, saving the Jillaga Ash from extinction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Cuttings will also be stored and dried.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Jillaga Ash is only found in Wadbilliga and nearby Deua national park, and the Wadbilliga population was nearly destroyed in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/2024\/dec\/31\/our-sky-turned-red-in-black-summer-australia-stepped-off-some-kind-of-precipice\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">black summer bushfires<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">It grows up to 25m, lives for up to 400 years, but does not have the post-fire regeneration capability of other trees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">It usually grows on very steep slopes, rocky hilltops and ridgelines with shallow soils, and \u201coften has a characteristic downhill lean\u201d, according to the NSW government.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The government has funded the conservancy to save six species in the area, including the Jillaga Ash.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cThe five-day trip involved camping, four-wheel driving, hiking through dense vegetation, climbing and abseiling, surveying, collecting and botanising,\u201d Downie said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cFollowing the success of this mission, we are considering new locations in which abseiling can be used to rescue endangered plants.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Sherlock said they had to work without mobile phone service, and tackle some tough 4WD tracks. He thinks drones could be used in the future to spot plants and assess any risks before going in for retrieval.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The Jillaga Ash seeds will be stored in RBGV\u2019s state botanical collection, which has more than 1.5m specimens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two horticulturalists have undertaken a daring abseiling mission to rescue gumnuts from an endangered tree on a 300m&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-264813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}