President’s Report – 2013

PRESIDENTS REPORT 2013

Three new grants were awarded this year

To Susanne Schmidt, University of Queensland, for the project Functional responses of Triodia in the spinifex grasslands of arid Australia;

To Mark Ooi, University of Wollongong, for the project Clinal variation in seed dormancy and recruitment success of Boronia: implications for persistence under climate change;

and to Nathalie Nagalingum, Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, for the project Conservation genetics of wild populations and botanic garden collections of Australian Cycads.

Further details can be found on the Foundation’s website

Four final reports were received this year:

From Carola Kuramotto de Bednarik: Relative importance of fire regimes and environmental gradients for the distribution of rainforests in the Sydney region by Carola Kuramotto de Bednarik. With significant contributions from: Dr Geoffrey Cary, Prof. Ross Bradstock, Dr Malcolm Gill, Dr Karen King, Dr Mike Austin and Dr Emlyn Williams. This arrived in late December 2012, but in terms of President’s Reports is in this year.

From Nicholas Paul: “Green caviar” and “Sea grapes”: targeted cultivation of high‐value seaweeds from the genus Caulerpa Nicholas A. Paul , Symon A. Dworjanyn and Rocky de Nys. A summary was in the July 2013 Newsletter.

From Karen Johnson: Determining the pollinators of rare and endangered Epacris species: implications for conservation by Karen Johnson and Peter McQuillan. You will have seen some of this beautiful report featured in the July 2013 Newsletter.

From John Morgan: Vegetation change in the Pretty Valley alpine grasslands from 1945 to 2003: the influence of grazing on plant community succession by John Morgan & Pete Green.

All were of a good standard, and can be found on the Foundation’s website

Communication with members
Two new Newsletters were sent out by Ian Cox, one in January and one in July.
On the website, in addition to the final reports above, Donations and Bequests pages were added. Newsletters were added to the website six months after they were provided to members.
As noted in the 2012 President’s Report, the Council is exploring the potential of using social networking via the internet to make the activities of our funded researchers more immediate. The pros and cons of using Facebook for this have been discussed, as well as the alternative of developing the Foundation’s own blog site. This remains a work in progress.

Finally I should like to thank all of you for your contributions over the year, most particularly our hard working Secretary Ian Cox and Treasurer Jenny Jobling, members of the Finance Subcommittee, of the Scientific Committee, and members of Council. A special thank you to all donors and benefactors of the Foundation: without you the Australian Flora Foundation could not function. Particularly noteworthy is a donation of $5,000 from APS South Australian Region.

Peter Goodwin
President
25th November 2013