Consultant to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2018 – 2020.
Jodi McGraw Consulting teamed with Dr. Justen Whittall (Santa Clara University) to develop and implement an experimental reintroduction for the Ben Lomond wallflower at the Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve. The project used a small-scale manipulative experiment to:
- Testing alternative soil disturbance treatments to promote the species establishment from seed and performance of transplanted seedlings grown in the greenhouse;
- Comparing the performance of wallflower seedlings established from single populations and from genetic crosses between populations—a genetic treatment conducted to address reduced fecundity resulting from self-incompatibility;
- Testing the soil disturbance and genetic treatments across a range of microhabitat conditions within the site, to evaluate their interactions and inform site selection for full-scale introductions.
The results of the study were used to inform a larger reintroduction being planned to planned extirpation of the species from the reserve.