How daredevil drones find nearly extinct plants hiding in cliffs - SABC News - Breaking news, special reports, world, business, sport coverage of all South African current events. Africa's news leader.

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Ben Nyberg stood on a knife-edge ridge along Hawaii’s Na Pali Coast, his eyes scouring the leafy recesses of the neighboring red-rock ridges. It was quiet, if not for a faint buzzing of a drone flying among flocks of curious white-tailed tropicbirds.

Nyberg steered the drone closer toward the opposing ridge, scanning the iPad in his hands, which acted as a viewfinder. Then, he saw it: Wilkesia hobdyi.

For decades, searching for such hard-to-reach plants and collecting samples was carried out by intrepid botanists who rappelled by rope down dangerous cliffs to hunt for what was lost. In the case of W. hobdyi, there was thought to be less than 600 individuals growing along the Na Pali Coast. Many of Kauai’s endangered plants sprout only from the steepest cliffs, where goats can’t reach. But the foliage now spread out before Nyberg amounted to more than 100 plants. He flew the drone within 5 meters of the greenery, snapping high-resolution photos to confirm his findings back in the lab.

About 10% of Kauai’s plants are already extinct or extinct in the wild, and a further 87% are endangered, according to a 2020 assessment for the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.

 

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