Each year, the Fund’s small grant recipients battle everything from extreme elements and inhospitable conditions to the vagaries of some of the world’s most challenging bureaucracies to enhance the knowledge, appreciation and protection of species in locations around the world.

Of these activities, however, among the most rewarding of all is the rediscovery of a species long thought to have vanished from the wild spaces of our planet. In Morocco, the Fund is supporting a project that has done just that.

Having not been seen outside of an herbarium in over thirty years, in April 2019 Richard Lansdown of the IUCN Freshwater Plant Specialist Group, and his colleagues, discovered the Endangered Mathez’s water-starwort (Callitriche mathezii).

In total, the project – which has been provided with $12,500 by the Fund to develop an ex-situ conservation strategy for C. mathezii – located the elusive carpet-like plant at five separate sites – some where the species was previously known to have grown, but also one new site at an altitude of 1,900 metres altitude on Jbel Hebri in the Middle Atlas Mountains.