A. Species
Scientific name: Limonium carolinianum
Common name(s): Carolina Sea Lavender
Global IUCN Red List Threat Status: Least Concern
B. Location of use
Geographic location(s):
- Nova Scotia
Country/Region: Canada/ Nova Scotia
C. Scale of assessment
Scale of assessment: Sub-national / Sub-region / Sub-State
Name/Details of location: 4 salt-marsh study sites along the coastline to the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia
D. Timescale of use
Start Year: 1996
End Year: 1999
E. Information about the use
How is the wild species sourced?: Wild species sourced from its natural habitat
Type of use: Extractive
Practice of use: Gathering/Cutting/Collecting terrestrial plants and fungi or their products from the wild
Lethal or non-lethal: Non-Lethal
Does this use involve take/extraction of: Only parts or products of the organism
Purpose(s) of end use: Decorative and aesthetic and Recreation
Motivation of use: Income generation from trade (individual/household/community) and Recreational
Is this use legal or illegal?: Legal under national law
F. Information about the Users
Which stakeholder(s) does the record primarily focus on?: Local people
G. Information about the sustainability of use
Is there evidence that the use is having an impact on the target species?: Wild species sourced from its natural habitat
Has an assessment (or judgement) of sustainability of the use of the target species from an ecological perspective been recorded?: Yes, considered unsustainable
Details of assessment carried out: Authors' conclusion based on the data presented in this study
Brief summary on why the use has been assessed/judged to be sustainable or unsustainable: Authors state: "The lack of a persistent seed bank and the very limited dispersal of Limonium carolinianum means that harvesting has an immediate and dramatic effect upon recruitment into the local population. However, whether this in turn would result in significant population declines or lead to the extinction of local populations is as yet unknown. Variation in adult survivorship and growth is often more important than variation in seedling recruitment in determining population growth rate in long-lived species. The removal of blooms will divert resources from seed maturation and has the potential to increase adult survivorship and growth. Therefore, it is conceivable that in spite of its marked effect on seedling recruitment, harvesting may in fact have no negative effect on population growth or viability."
Has an assessment (or judgement) of sustainability of the use of the target species from an economic perspective been recorded?: Yes, considered unsustainable
Details of assessment carried out: this study
Brief summary on why the use has been assessed/judged to be sustainable or unsustainable: increasing commercialization resulted in over-harvesting and thus declining wild sea lavender plants
Has an assessment (or judgement) of sustainability of the use of the target species from a social perspective been recorded?: not recorded
Has an assessment (or judgement) of sustainability of the use of the target species from a human health perspective been recorded?: not recorded
Has an assessment (or judgement) of sustainability of the use of the target species from an animal health/welfare perspective been recorded?: not recorded
Recommendations provided in the record to maintain or enhance the sustainability of the use of the target species
Authors recommend that: * First, harvesters should never harvest the last inflorescence in a clump of plants. With such a guideline, a population would still have at least one flower stalk per square meter after harvesting. This would ensure that there is some seed available to recolonize a site if the adult(s) in the immediate area should die. * Second, periodic closures (voluntary or enforced) of marshes to flower harvesting would provide pulses of recruitment into a population. If these pulses occur frequently enough relative to the life span of the adults, this would reduce the possibility that local populations would go extinct. Sites where the local population has been extirpated would eventually be recolonized by long-distance dispersal, but our study suggests that natural recolonization would be extremely slow.
Record source
Information about the record source: scientific_pub
Date of publication/issue/production: 2002-01-01T00:00:00+0000
Source Reference(s):
Date of record entry: 2022-12-30