Native Plant Society of New Mexico Native Plant Society of New Mexico

Clay Meredith, Species Survival Officer for Plants at the New Mexico BioPark Society will detail the BioPark’s efforts to collect and study seeds from under-conserved rare plants.

This illustrated talk will cover the basics of seed banking, the process of building our facility, our recent efforts to collect, and the BioPark’s plans to experimentally propagate species from around the state.

Clay Meredith is conservation biologist with the New Mexico BioPark Society’s Center for Species Survival (CSS), where he works to conserve plants in New Mexico and abroad. The CSS works with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature to assess conservation need, plan for conservation success, and take direct action to intervene utilizing the resources of the ABQ BioPark. Clay has lived and worked in New Mexico for 20 years and studied paleoecology and archaeology at the University of New Mexico and Idaho State University. Since 2018, he has applied his ecological knowledge to still living plant species with a focus on medicinal plants.