Joined by guest speaker Professor Stephen Hopper AC. who has an incredible 50 years experience as a conservation biologist and teacher, including 12 years leading Kings Park and Botanic Garden, and 6 years leading the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Steve is a well-published scientific author, who’s research focuses on sustainable living with biodiversity, especially with Aboriginal Elders; and old, climatically-buffered, infertile landscapes such as granite outcrops.
Professor Hopper summarises close to 60 years of visiting the Leeuwin Naturaliste Ridge, focusing on rare plant surveys conducted in the 1980s, where considerable flora components were undescribed, for e.g. of the presently known 50 species of the Orchid genus, Caladenia, Professor Hopper and colleagues named about half of these, now known in the Augusta Margaret River Shire.
Local endemic species are a feature of the ridge; as well as rare hybrids, and rare communities, including those of inland granite outcrops, each with their own mix of rock outcrop and gnamma (rock pool) species.
Professor Hopper also discusses the ongoing discoveries of new weeds, and a completely fresh perspective on the emerging flora from walking together with Wadandi people, the Webb family in particular.
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