L earning  O bjective  30

30.View video on CONSERVATION OF ENDANGERED NATIVE HAWAIIAN PLANTS. Understand the following: the status of the endangerment of the Hawaiian flora, what federal listing as an endangered species signifies, conservation organizations in Hawai'i, and methods (traditional and recent) used in Hawaiian plant conservation.

Explain the role of the following: in situ, ex situ conservation, mid-elevation nurseries, the genetic safety net, botanic gardens, micropropagation, habitats, re- introduction, restoration, exclosures and some reasons for saving endangered plants.

I. LEVEL OF ENDANGERMENT of native Hawaiian plants

A.Of the 1,100 species and subspecies in the Hawaiian flora, 270 are listed by the Federal Government as endangered.

B. What does "listed" mean as in the Endangered Species Act?

1. Basically, in the 70's, federal laws were written to protect plants and animals whose numbers are dramatically decreasing and are threatened by extinction.

2. The organism must be proposed for listing, studies made, public hearings held, and final decisions made - all of which may take years. This process costs a great deal, easily $100,000 or more. Meanwhile, the organism remains unprotected.

3. When listing for a species is completed, only that particular species is protected by certain federal and state laws. The organism's habitat is not under this protection. Listing does not carry any funding for the species. A fence can be built around a cluster of rare plants (if some agency can find the money) but insects and small herbivores can get through and the habitat around the area can be so damaged that the organism may not be able to survive.

4. Many conservationists today would like to see the Endangered Species Act rewritten so as to protect the HABITATS of endangered plants and animals. This would be much more effective in their preservation.

5. In Hawaii, we have the unusual situation where our state laws protect endangered native plants to a greater extent than do the federal laws.

a. It is against the state law to own, propagate, or transport any endangered native Hawaiian plant without special permission which is difficult to obtain.
This is not the case under federal law.

b. This state law has resulted in the uncommon situation where people on the mainland have bought and sold the rare Brighamia insignis (or "Cabbage-on-the-Stick") while it is probhibited here. In Tonga, I saw an endangered native Hawaiian Pritchardia palm, lo'ulu, which was being grown in a bird sanctuary. It had been brought from Australia which was legal for them, but illegal for us in Hawaii to do so.

c. The rationale for this state law is to provide greater protection for our highly endangered plants and to keep the rare kinds from "mingling genetically" with other plants as they might when grown side by side in cultivation. This would result in diluting and losing the original types.

In reality, this state law seems to have contributed to even more declining numbers of endangered plants, decreasing opportunities for them to be grown and observed by others, while they are totally disappearing in the wild.

C. In all of the United States, there are about 580 endangered plants listed. Hawaii has almost 50% of the endangered plants of the U.S. but only .06% of the total land mass. This figure does not even include another 100 native Hawaiian plants species under consideration for federal listing.

D. Hawaiian flora is the most endangered in the world. If this trend can be reversed, Hawaii could be in the forefront of developing new approaches to plant conservation that could benefit the rest of the world which also has this problem but to a lesser extent.

A. National organizations:

U.S. National Parks has two parks in Hawaii - Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island and Haleakala on Maui.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency.

B. State Agencies:

The Department of Land and Natural Resources has several programs to protect the endangered plants such as NARS (the Natural Area Reserves System) - large areas maintained under special protection. There are three on O'ahu - Mount Ka'ala, Ka'ena Point and Pahole.

C. Private Agencies:

Two important national private, non-profit conservation agencies who play major roles in conservation on the islands are:

The Nature Conservancy which, in the last 15 years, has made monumental gains in consolidating private and public lands into protected regions; and The Center for Plant Conservation which now actively coordinates many programs of plant conservation on the islands.

A. Terms used:

1.Habitat : the place where the plant or animal naturally lives, like its address so to speak. Habitat includes also all the environmental factors (biotic and abiotic) which maintains the plants - such as pollinators, rainfall, soil and temperature, just to mention a few.

2. Ex situ : from Latin which means "away from" or off-site conservation. Examples are like botanical gardens or zoos for animals.

3. In situ means "in the situation or place" usually called on-site conservation where endangered plants and animals are protected in their habitat. Examples would be the National Parks and the NARS regions in Hawaii.

B.. Important Processes or Steps in Off-site Conservation.

1. Sampling of plant populations.

Seeds or propagules of as many different genetic types of the species must be gathered from wild populations. This ensures the protection of as many different traits as possible which can assist in the the vitality of the species.

2. Storage of genetic samples.

The traditional method is by seed collection but many native Hawaiian plant seeds do not last long in traditional seed storage systems.

A new system developed in Hawaii involves micropropagation where the plants may be kept just about indefinitely in small containers in almost suspended growth until an appropriate area can be prepared for them to grow under more usual conditons.

3. Living Collections.

This is the more traditional method of storage using botanical gardens primarily as places to maintain populations of endangered plants where they can be studied and viewed by the public until they can be returned to their original habitats.

4. Remote nurseries.

a.

 This is a new development in plant conservation in response to the special conditions of Hawaiian endangered plant conservation. These nurseries are placed at or near elevations at which the habitat of the endangered plant is normally found. Because many Hawaiian endangered plants have habitats in higher elevations where the climate is cooler and moister, they do not grow well at lower elevations, locations of most nurseries and botanical gardens.

b.

 A further advantage is that these remote nurseries have nearby exclosures protected in situ or on-site locations which are fenced areas in which the nursery-grown plants may be planted or re-introduced back into its habitat.

c.

 This is one step of many in the restoration of a particular plant association which may now be highly altered or damaged from its original state. Because the plant was orignally composed of many environmental factors (biotic like other plants and animals) as well as abiotic (like soils and even rainfall, light intensities and temperatures) that are now altered, it is a long slow process to restore the organism to its original state.

III.The GENETIC SAFETY NET program developed for preserving endangered Hawaiian plants.
 

A. This involves programs like the ones above-micro propagation, mid-elevation nurseries, exclosure and collections of living plants of Hawaiian botanical gardens.

B. Its goal is to save the 120 different native plants which are critically endangered because they have only 20 or fewer individuals growing in the wild. The condition of these plants is like that of a person coming to the hospital emergency room with little time left to be saved. If the patient is successfully stabilized only then can the doctors work to correct the conditions which brought him to the brink of death.

C. Likewise with our critically-endangered plants. They must be stabilized and brought back from the brink of extinction. Only then can conservationists and others attempt to "operate" on the harmful environmental conditions and eventually restore them back to their habitat.

D. The term "genetic" is key to the concept. The hope is to save as many different genetic types which helps to ensure more possible recovery and long-term survival for the endangered plant.

E. Right now, only 30 to 40% of the critically-endangered plants have been successfully propagated and now await the next step which is to be re-introduced into their habitat. The plants not in those numbers are still very much at risk.
 

A. Traditional answers often include the direct benefits we see for ourselves as humans: essential new medicine resources, the protection of related important econcomic plants - to name just a few.

B. Scientists have special interest and fascination in most any lifeform and Hawaiian plants have many unique characteristics which make them especially attractive to study.

C. An important moral issue is simply that, as humans, we need to share the planet with other lifeforms. It could be greatly to our benefit in the many ways we already know and also in ways may not yet know of at this time.

Once these lifeforms are gone, as they say ... extinction is forever.