Botanists working to preserve Hawaii’s fragile ecosystem call for greater recognition of the indigenous contribution to the discovery of medicinal plants.

Below are extracts from an article written by Tara Godvin and published by the St Petersburg Times:

The National Tropical Botanical Garden offers plenty of beautiful flowers, with three sites on Kauai, Hawaii's "Garden Isle." Here visitors can get off the beach and learn more about the local flora. But one aspect of what takes place at the botanical garden goes well beyond aesthetics. Resident scientists face the challenge of snatching the Pacific islands' quickly disappearing plants from the brink of extinction.

"Most of our visitors to Hawaii look at this beautiful, lush landscape and they just think, 'It's paradise,' " said Charles R. "Chipper" Wichman, garden director, gesturing to the verdant valley stretching out below his office window on Kauai. "They have no idea that what they are viewing is a war zone between our native plants that are trying to hold on to a space and all these invasive plants and animals that are trying to take it away from them."

The Hawaiian Islands have a wealth of conservation needs and are known among botanists as the nation's "extinction capital." About 180 plant species in Hawaii have 50 or fewer individuals living in the wild, Wichman said.

"We are facing an extinction crisis here in the Hawaiian Islands. And the plants here are part of our national heritage, part of the United States' national heritage," Wichman said.

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In all, the garden has had a hand in the discovery of 30 new species endemic to Hawaii and the rediscovery of about another 30 thought to be extinct.

But the garden has more in its sights on the research front than reproduction. It also has an Institute for Ethnomedicine through which the garden discovered, with the help of traditional Samoan healers, a potential anti-HIV drug currently in clinical trials.

If the drug proves to be marketable, the Samoan government as well as the village where it was found and the family of the healer who helped find it will get a good portion of the royalties, Wichman said.

"Our goal is to really try and set the standard for how to work with indigenous people and honor their intellectual property rights," he said.