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Vital work saving rare wild plants is back on track after vandal attack
A22-year-old botanist who is aiming to save endangered wild plants in the north-west of England is having to restart his work after a vandal attack.
Josh Styles started the NorthWest Rare Plants Initiative last year, identifying 49 plants on the cusp of extinction in the region. He managed to take samples of 40 and was propagating them in pots at home, but last month lost 28 when a drunken vandal covered them in bleach and vomit.
But a fundraising page was set up online by a friend and Josh has now moved into a new home – and is hard at work once more trying to save local wild plants such as lesser bladderwort, marsh valerian, frogbit and mousetail.
“I’ve been overwhelmed,” an emotional Josh told Garden News. “I can’t believe how kind people have been.”
Having been interested in botany from the age of seven, he graduated last year with a degree in ecology and set about starting the initiative. “One or two plants go extinct in every county each year and not enough is done to save them. One in every seven indigenous plants in the country are under threat,” he said. “I’m from the north-west so thought I’d target those plants in this region.”
Once he has done so, it can take months to actually locate the plants, get permission from landowners or bodies, such as English Nature, to take samples and then grow them before trying to re-introduce them, both at the original site and other suitable sites in the region. Where areas are identified as Sites of Special Scientific Interest, the process can be understandably longer.
Josh is working with the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland and the Species Recovery Trust, along with Chester Zoo, which was keen to collaborate on the conservation of local native plants. l More details of his work can be found at nwrpi.weebly.com.