The article says they saved the only grove of them in their natural habitat in a secret location, so I assume that means they're growing in botanic gardens in other parts of Australia. But since they were only discovered in 1994 it's likely we're dependent on these groves.
You can even buy Wollemi pine seedlings at the Mt Tomah Botanic Gardens in the Blue Mountains, which is near the (still secret) spot they were found. But they cost $100+ a pop and are apparently rather tricky to grow.
I wonder whether it’d be dangerous to introduce them on other continents. I’m naturally against such ideas usually, but the entire American continent is full of such things already. At least the SW has invasive trees that seem somewhat integrated.
They are growing in Scotland according to the Wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wollemia and I've seen a large one growing unprotected at Gardens by the Bay in Singapore.
I have two of these Wollemi pines after reading about the story of them a few years ago and being fascinated (I paid $100 for them but worth it to tell people the story). The trick to keeping them alive is to not do anything with them at all I think.
Probably not. Is cultivated from seeds, is huge, needs a lot of time to flower and reproduce, and is economically valuable.
Creation of new populations ex-situ of critically endangered species is normally seen as beneficial. Is an exception allowed under certain circumstances.
Some of this trees, still alive, were born when Europe was in the Middle Age. The genus is monotypic and exists since the last 200 millions of years or so.
Those are invaluable comprehensive reviews about australian climate and history registering each single, warm, hot and cold year, each volcanic eruption. In a place of the planet without written documents and mostly unknown before the arrival of the white men. We can infer from here if something happened with the macrofauna (when), if people migrations match some harsh decade and dry spell, if it was an equivalent to a small ice age or not, etc. Is a treasure of data.
OK, so they're scientifically valuable, historically valuable, perhaps emotionally or culturally valuable. That's plenty good enough reason to save them - I'm not trying to argue they shouldn't have been saved.
But I'm still not seeing that they have any current economic value. Which is fine, not everything needs to have economic value, I was just curious if there is some that I was missing.
Yes, it is planted in several botanical gardens and other places, and work is being done on propagating it.
What we avoided is having a situation like what happened with the golden fuchsia (Deppea splendens) in the 1980s, where it becomes extinct in the wild and only exists in botanical gardens.
Some people have planted saplings in their yards. My partner's father has one down in Sydney. Although it looks superficially similar to its pine brethen, it is a quite unique tree! Apparently his tree is struggling in the drought but the recent rain should help it.
We gave a seedling to my parents in law over ten years ago, it's grown really well in a large pot out the front of their house in the rural outskirts of Sydney (and we didn't pay $100 for it either).
