[PCA] Rare Hawaiian plants face Kilauea's eruption

[De Angelis, Patricia]

Recent note from
*Ecological Society of America*
30 August 2018
<https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/fee.1940>
*Dispatches*

Rare Hawaiian plants face Kilauea's eruption
Meghan Miner Murray

More than 1380 plants are native to the Hawaiian Islands, and many of their
populations are under constant threat. “The life of a plant on a volcanic
island is a rough one”, says botanist Lyman Perry with the state's Division
of Forestry and Wildlife (Hilo, HI). “Populations are restricted and
fragmented into tiny pockets. A lot of things are conspiring against it”.
Now, as a result of the ongoing eruption from Kilauea Volcano, two rare
plants – *Ischaemum byrone*, a native coastal grass, and *Cyrtandra
nanawaleensis*, a shrub endemic to the “big island” and a relative of the
African violet – have lost their largest populations. Both species’ home
ranges are still under lava threat.

*C nanawaleensis* has fared the worst. Originally whittled down by habitat
loss and invasive weeds and ungulates, there were over 200 plants in the
Malama Ki Forest Reserve in 1981. That entire subpopulation was lost when
lava and wafting toxic volcanic gases inundated and scorched the reserve in
June. Determined to save the species, Perry and a team of botanists and
horticulturalists rescued cuttings from a handful of individuals upslope
and upwind. “We were in major triage mode”, explains Perry. “We went in
with respirators and sulfur dioxide meters.” The botanists sent salvaged
leaves to the Volcano Rare Plant Facility (Volcano, HI) as well as to a
protected site where they hope to propagate and out‐plant them.

Still, says Perry, *C nanawaleensis* “is just one small example of plant
rescue in Hawaii. There are many species in similar situations”. Joan
Yoshioka oversees the Plant Extinction Prevention (PEP) Program (Hilo, HI),
which works to conserve Hawaii's 236 species that have fewer than 50
remaining individuals. “At present, [*C nanawaleensis* and *I byrone*],
while still very rare, aren't rare enough to warrant PEP status…and that is
a good thing. It means there are more individuals…distributed across a
larger landscape, and therefore [they] have a better prospect of survival
if we're able to reduce or remove the threats that caused their rarity”,
says Yoshioka. “We may not have the ability to stop lava flows…but we [can]
now curb the threats that cause extinctions so that these species survive
with enough biological diversity to withstand [all kinds of] natural
disasters. In the best case, these species will survive…[and] in the worst
case, they will go extinct in our lifetimes and the legacy of having
survived for millions of years will be lost forever.”
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