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.
Creation of new populations ex-situ of critically endangered species is normally seen as beneficial. Is an exception allowed under certain circumstances.
Is that solely because of their rarity, or is there some other reason?
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.
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.
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.