The Hawaii Plant Specialist Group arose from the informal coalition of the Hawaii Rare Plant Restoration Group. The Group consists of over 60 participants from over 30 organizations, and meets regularly to share information about monitoring, collection, ex situ propagation, reintroduction and restoration projects, and to plan new initiatives. The group’s mission is “to prevent the extinction of native Hawaiian plants and provide for their recovery through a cooperatively administered off-site plant conservation system in collaboration with on-site management partners to sample, propagate, and reintroduce rare plants, and to advance the preservation of native plants and their habitats through effective communication and public education

.” Currently, the group implements this mission through a Plant Extinction Prevention program, which aims to manage wild populations of extremely rare (less than 50 individuals in the wild) species in situ, while also collecting propagules for storage and reintroduction efforts into protected habitat. The group has established this Plant Extinction Prevention program for four of the Hawaiian Islands, and plans to expand to two additional islands this year, along with an archipelago- wide coordinator to oversee the program. The group is also developing standard protocols for these efforts that address sanitation, genetics, monitoring, measures of success, and adaptive management. The group’s goal is to have all rare plant recovery efforts implementing these protocols.

The group met in May 2006 and determined five priority actions for the coming year:

• Reintroduction handbook for private landowners interested in rare plant conservation
• Database for the web to make it easier to track and share current actions
• Continue present Plant Extinction Prevention programs
• Provide simple how-to outline for permitting processes
• Mentoring program for landowners

The Group has assessed nearly 200 plant species over the last three years. This represents less than a third of the rare flora of the Hawaiian Islands. They will continue these assessments, processing the rarest species first.