Kouchibouguac aims to reintroduce threatened plant

Kouchibouguac National Park has joined up with botanists from the University of Prince Edward Island and the Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre to try and breathe new life into a rare plant.

The Gulf of St. Lawrence aster is labeled as "threatened" by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, which means the plant is likely to go extinct if the conservation efforts aren't undertaken.

In light of the designation, Kouchibouguac is trying to reintroduce the plant into the park.

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David Mazerolle, a botanist with the centre, said the plant has some familiar relatives in the area.

"It's a plant of the aster family. So it's in the same family that you find daisies, and hawkweed and dandelions," said Mazerolle.

The plant is only found in specific salt marshes in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Quebec's Magdalen Islands.

Kouchibouguac used to have two areas where the plant grew, however they were destroyed by a storm in 2000.

"The storm had dumped so much sand over the salt marsh … that all the seeds that were at this site were buried under so much sand that there was no possibility for the seeds to germinate," said Mazerolle.

The plant is an annual, meaning that it only lives for one year. So it is important that their seeds survive, they don't get another chance to reproduce.

Efforts were made in 2003 and 2004 to reintroduce the plant, but they were unsuccessful.

For this attempt the group traveled the coast at Kouchibouguac. When they found a site they felt was promising they would plant seeds from plants that were grown in a laboratory.

"[You put the seeds] on the sandy soil and just cover them up, only very slightly, with a thin layer of sand to make sure that the seeds don't get blown away," said Mazerolle.

Mazerolle said it's important to make an effort to bring back and protect the plant because it's endemic to our region and found nowhere else in the world.

"We have to be good stewards of our coastal ecosystems and do what we can to keep this species alive and well," he said.

"Every species has an intrinsic value. The web of life being as complicated as it is, we never quite know exactly what all the linkages are between plants and different insects and animals that are found in an ecosystem."

The botanists won't know until September if they were successful.