Come Fly with Us!

December 29, 2018

Lida Pigott Burney flies drone to monitor quarry restoration. Left, top, view above recent “Scout area” restoration near picnic area. Right, top, looking down on central part of Reserve, with sinkhole lower left and seashore lower right. Bottom, oblique view across restorations, with Mt. Haupu in background.

Our new quarry and streamside restorations are doing even better than we expected. With support from Grove Farm, EPA, and visitors’ donations, we have been able to plant in 2018 a total of 1,492 native trees, shrubs, and perennial groundcovers. Our staff and interns did this with the help of 585 K-12 school children and 131 college students.

We monitor all our native plant translocations by maintaining a database with up-to-date and historical information on each of the thousands of plants translocated here since 1999. We get help for this from students and “volun-tourists,” and sometimes technology can provide a boost, too. Thanks to Emerson and Peggy Knowles, MCR was able to purchase a small drone to photograph all our plants from above every six months or so. This tiny flying camera is a powerful new tool for monitoring plants’ survival, growth rate, and reproduction – and the progress of the weeds! Here are a few of the “prettiest.”