The University of Madeira is developing a project to locate rare and endangered species of the archipelago’s flora using ‘drones’, said the institution, noting that students of the Applied Biology Master’s will participate in the activities on Monday.
The plant location project with unmanned aircraft – ‘drones’ – stems from a partnership between the Botany Group of the Faculty of Life Sciences of the University of Madeira and the National Tropical Botanical Garden Hawaii (USA), being financed by Mohamed Bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund.
In a statement, the Madeiran institution states that on Tuesday, April 4, a new population of Cheirolophus massonianus was located, an “endemic, extremely rare and endangered” plant of the Madeira archipelago.
The project uses ‘drones’ and the georeferencing of plants located in rocky ravines, which are impossible to access by other means, such as the cliffs of Cabo Girão, on the west coast of the island of Madeira, included in the Natura 2000 site, and has the support of the Institute of Forests and Nature Conservation (IFCN).
According to the University of Madeira, the team consists of Miguel Menezes de Sequeira, Célia Bairos and Ben Nyberg, a pilot and specialist in the use of this technology and with extensive experience in locating plants on the islands of Hawaii.
Last week, “detailed surveys” were carried out in Madeira and Porto Santo, with the participation of students of the Master’s in Applied Biology in the activities scheduled for Monday, April 10, within the scope of a field class within the scope of the curricular unit Biodiversity Conservation.
The University of Madeira states that the results of the project will be shared with IFCN in order to enhance the knowledge and conservation activities of the flora species of the Madeira archipelago.