Drones hunt down rare plants in Hawaii by going where people can't

There's something inherently creepy and annoying about drones buzzing over our heads — a frequent backyard irritation in cities like New York. But it turns out, a drone’s spying abilities can be useful: an uncrewed drone discovered a super-rare plant on a steep cliff on the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi. The discovery wowed botanists — and shows how technology can help conservationists in their fight against extinction.

“We were really excited,” says Ben Nyberg, a GIS specialist and lead drone pilot at the National Tropical Botanical Garden, a nonprofit institution charted by US Congress in 1964. Nyberg was flying the drone that found the plants at NTBG’s 1,000-acre Limahuli preserve.

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