ABOVE: Bishop Museum's Seed Bank, housed in a shipping container, can store up to five million seeds of native species, including the loulu, mao, kolomana, maiapilo, alahee and puakala —enough to restore five thousand acres of forest every year.
Home to more than twenty-two million biological specimens, two million cultural objects and a million photos, films, artworks, recordings and manuscripts preserving the history, culture and environment of Hawaii.
Now there's a new—and huge—collection: a seed bank with everything needed to dry, process and store up to five million seeds, enough to restore native Hawaiian species on up to five thousand acres of land every year.
Looking around these verdant Islands, it's easy to forget that most of the plants we see are introduced, not native, and the loss of those species means the loss of a habitat unique in the world. "The native species that evolved in Hawaii are remarkable examples of adaptation, evolving over millions of years to create a functioning ecosystem," says Timothy Gallaher, Bishop Museum's curator of botany. "Non-native organisms can disrupt these relationships, which can lead to ecosystem collapse, where the loss of just a few species triggers a cascade of extinctions that can completely alter our environment."
Bishop Museum Seed Bank collections manager Nicholas Walvoord with a vial of native alahee seeds.
The seed bank is part of an Island-wide effort to forestall or even reverse those extinctions. "As a restoration seed bank, we focus on things that, while not federally listed as endangered, do have populations in decline like kookooau, akoko and wiliwili," says Nicholas Walvoord, Seed Bank collections manager. "Organizations such as the Plant Extinction Prevention Program and Lyon Arboretum concentrate on saving ultra-rare species from the brink. We focus on restoring areas so those ultra-rare species will have a home to return to."
The seed bank, which fills a forty-foot shipping container located near the Richard T. Mamiya Science Adventure Center on the museum's Great Lawn, was donated by Terraformation, a global forest restoration company based in Hawaii. The museum is developing seed bank activities for visitors and educational materials for the museum website. The staff plans a Go and Grow Station where people can take native seeds from the museum home to plant.
Bishop Museum is in a unique position to do this work. "We have over 240 years of botanical data in our Herbarium and dedicated knowledgeable botanists," says Walvoord. "The challenge of restoring the functionality of native ecosystems is complex. Restoration projects must have the tools to identify the correct plants to use and the best practices in collecting seeds. The museum can't and doesn't do this alone."
