SeedReady Communities wins Gold at the 2026 Awards for Nature
On 10 September, we joined conservationists, scientists and supporters at the Australian Museum for the 2026 Australian Geographic Awards for Nature, celebrating projects working to protect Australia’s natural environment.
We’re thrilled to share that the Australian Seed Bank Partnership was named a Gold Tier Award recipient, receiving $50,000 to deliver our new SeedReady Communities Project.
Our National Coordinator, Dr Kathryn Eyles, accepted the award alongside Dr Nathan Emery from the Australian PlantBank, with the trophy presented by Australian Geographic Chair Chrissie Goldrick, and Australian actor Bryan Brown.
Photographs of the Awards for Nature ceremony by Giovanni Portelli reproduced courtesy of Australian Geographic
We were in excellent company. Across the night, the Australian Geographic Society awarded $150,000 to five conservation projects spanning seeds, beetles, underwater forests, shorebirds and landscape restoration. We warmly congratulate the other 2026 award recipients:
- Silver – Christmas Beetle Monitoring Network, Invertebrates Australia
- Silver – Operation Crayweed, UNSW Sydney and partners
- Bronze – Shorebird Stewards, BirdLife Australia
- Bronze – Raukkan Conservation Community Project, Regenerate Australia and Raukkan Community Council.
Together, the projects demonstrate just how diverse conservation can be. For us, the award marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter.
Across Australia, threatened ecological communities are facing increasing pressure from climate change, habitat loss, fire and other threats. When these ecosystems decline, we can lose much more than individual plant species. We lose the interconnected plants, wildlife, cultural knowledge and ecological processes that make these places unique.
SeedReady Communities takes our seed conservation work beyond the seed vault.
Over the next two years, six conservation seed banks will work alongside Traditional Owners, Landcare groups, regional organisations, young people and local conservation communities across WA, SA, NT, NSW and VIC. Together, we’ll secure seed from 31 priority plant species that are important components of threatened ecological communities and significant bioregions, build knowledge about how to germinate them, and strengthen local capacity for conservation and restoration.
The goal is simple: to make threatened ecosystems restoration-ready.
The $50,000 award provides an exciting boost to this national collaboration, with participating organisations also contributing significant in-kind support to help deliver the project.
This is more than a project about saving seeds. It’s about making sure that when ecosystems need to be restored, the seed, knowledge and people are ready.
Watch to learn more about what we’re setting out to achieve.
