Transcript of Onward: Hawaii Botanist Races to Save Rare Plants | National Geographic

[Music] one of the things that makes Hawaii unique is the isolation the fact that they are small Islands too uh is part of the threat Hawaii is one of the extinction capitals of the world probably the extinction capital of the world I'm Steve Perman I am a field bot for the national tropical Botanical Gardens on Kawai and I uh work and specialize in endangered plants and so uh have been doing this work now for over 40 years there are only about 1,200 species of plants here and at least half of our species are threatened or endangered what looks like one rip fruit and several immatures inside we had to form this program called the plant Extinction prevention program because already 100 of our species in Hawaii had gone extinct we've been collecting this plant now for at least uh four years we've been coming up here and the seeds are good they germinate we really want to get good genetic representation from every individual that we can find of these rare plants so when we find the plants we want to collect seed that it's got a lot of seed inside multiple seeds in there we tag them we number them we monitor them regularly I have witnessed myself uh about 15 plants species die out uh just from my years and most of those were over the last 20 years uh they just become like friends she's doing good today when you see them you you'll go and see some a plant for 20 years and then you come back and it's dead it's like it is like losing a family member or or a [Music] friend the division of Forestry and is hoping to build a fence around the ababi Valley area and so before that fence goes up we'd like to see if some of those rare plants are still there I want to check a plant called planto princeps that I can see we can't really get to that one unless we're roped in we've had a lot of things come in that threaten our native plants over the years they've introduced uh sheep cattle goats and then add to that disease of plants that have come in so I'm going to have to be a little bit careful it is PLO prinet variety anomala which is only known from the island of kawaii uh what's come later though is just an onslaught of weeds from all over the world thousands of weed this is a weedy plant coming in behind it America fire so I'm going to break that Branch if we could tell you that like one of the plants found you know might be used for cancer or Aids then everybody would say oh well then let's save them but if these plants go extinct we're never going to be able to even test them but the main reason that I like them and and maybe it's a little esoteric to some people is just because they're there is enough for [Music] me I hate to use cliches like the plague but Extinction is forever they're part of the species of this planet of these islands uh and they evolved here and deserve to be here set for fruit here's what we I'm hoping that the future of this planet has people who are much more caring than some of the people I've met who who couldn't care less if these things go so uh maybe it's for a brighter future [Music]