Botanists rediscover a rare Hawaiian flower thought to be extinct—thanks to a drone

Wood has spent his career at the National Tropical Botanical Garden pushing the limits of anti-extinction botany, often rappelling down cliffs on Kauai and hanging out of helicopters to find and rescue precarious species with fewer than 50 individuals left—many of them with far fewer, perhaps just five or 10. In the Hawaiian islands, species like that are often found on a single part of a single island and nowhere else in the world. In 2016, Ben Nyberg, a drone specialist, began working with the National Tropical Botanical Garden on Kauai to scope out extreme spots in the verdant valleys of the island.