[Scpg] DEC 5/Saving Hawaii's Vanishing Flora Lecture @ SB Botanic Garden

[Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

Lecture At Santa Barbara Botanic Garden
Saving Hawaii's Vanishing Flora
Wednesday, December 5, 2007, 7pm, 2007
  $5 members/ $7 non-members (Reservations recommended)
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Hawaii has the most endangered flora of anywhere in the United States 
due to the extreme isolation of the islands and the rapid change 
Hawaii has undergone in the past 200 years.

Chipper Wichman, Director of the National Tropical Botanical Garden 
(www.ntgb.org), will share with you the story of how this 
organization was chartered by the United States Congress in 1964 as a 
non-profit organization dedicated to conservation, research, and 
education, and how it has grown over the past 40 years to become a 
national and international resource and a primary force in saving 
Hawaii's vanishing flora.

Witness intrepid botanists who stop at nothing short of the end of 
their rope and the beautiful and fragile tropical plants whose future 
depends on them. Watch as plants are plucked from the edge of 
extinction and nursed back to healthy populations through in situ and 
ex situ conservation programs.

You will learn how the scientific discoveries at NTBG have changed 
the way ecologists view evolution in the Pacific. NTBG scientists are 
also helping humankind through anti-HIV research and finding 
innovative ways to feed starving populations of the tropical world. 
In addition, innovative educational programs for medical MDs, college 
professors, and environmental journalists are provided. Wichman, who 
has been at the Garden for 31 years, will share with you in his 
unique and passionate way, the story of the NTBG and how it is 
working feverishly to save our nation's most endangered flora.

Chipper Wichman

Chipper Wichman, Director and Chief Executive Officer
National Tropical Botanical Garden

For most of his life, Chipper has worked to preserve the precious 
natural and cultural resources of Hawai`i where he was born and 
raised. He began work at the National Tropical Botanical Garden 
(NTBG) in 1976 where he worked with well-known botanists to conduct 
botanical surveys of Limahuli valley and the N? Pali coast. During 
these exciting expeditions Chipper discovered several new species of 
plants and helped to pioneer methods of rappelling down cliffs to 
hand pollinate the species threatened with extinction.
Over the past 20 years, Chipper and his wife Hau'oli, who is his 
Executive Assistant, have developed an integrated resource 
stewardship program in the 1,000-acre Limahuli valley which Chipper 
had inherited from his grandmother, Juliet Rice Wichman. This 
Ahupua'a Stewardship Program is based upon the traditional values 
that were the foundation of Hawaiian society and helped Chipper and 
Limahuli Garden and Preserve garner a prestigious award in 1997 for 
The Best Natural Botanical Garden in America from the American 
Horticultural Society in commemoration of the AHS's 75th anniversary.

Event Location:

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, Blaksley Library
For more information & reservations, contact:
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, (805) 682-4726, ext 102
1212 Mission Canyon Rd, Santa Barbara, CA 93105


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