A new national recovery plan has been adopted to help save the world’s only wild macadamia plants from extinction.
Shock finding In 2019, Queensland researchers were shocked to discover the global macadamia industry may have originated from nuts from a single tree or a small number of trees taken from Queensland to Hawaii in the 19th century.
“We reviewed the plan, and then it just got stuck in politics, and we’ve been anxiously lobbying to get the new plan approved because it really does guide our actions for conserving wild macadamias,” Ms Bond said.
The recovery plan notes that populations of wild macadamias on private land in Queensland are generally located where protective fencing and weed control would have little or no negative economic impact on the viability of farm enterprises.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The origin of the global $1.58 billion macadamia nut industry, Australia’s wild population has been decimated by clearing, with three species listed as vulnerable and a fourth critically endangered.
The Macadamia Conservation Trust estimates as few as 8,800 wild trees remain in small pockets of remnant sub-tropical rainforest in a thin strip along the east coast from Gladstone in central Queensland to northern New South Wales.
Given the lack of genetic diversity in the farmed crop, the race is on to preserve wild macadamia trees to improve traits like disease resistance, size and climate adaptability.
Ms Bond said it was one of Australia’s most endangered species, with less than 120 known trees remaining in a 6,000 square metre area of natural habitat in the Bulburin National Park, south-west of Miriam Vale.
Mr McConachie, who was instrumental in developing Queensland’s commercial industry, said macadamias were probably the only new food source in the world that has been domesticated in the last 1,000 years.
The recovery plan notes that populations of wild macadamias on private land in Queensland are generally located where protective fencing and weed control would have little or no negative economic impact on the viability of farm enterprises.
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