The Madeira Botany Group, from the Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Madeira, will organize, between the 7th and 11th of July, collection actions of endemic plants in inaccessible cliffs, using a Mamba drone. The group will count on the collaboration of the Madeira Operational Command and the Institute of Forests and Nature Conservation.
This action has the participation of Professor Ben Nyberg (National Tropical Botanical Garden, Hawaii, United States of America) as an expert and includes the use for the first time in Europe of a drone system that allows maneuvering and harvesting in the complex topographical conditions of Madeira Island, which are similar to those of the Hawaiian Islands.
The harvesting system is called Mamba and was developed by the Canadian company Outreach Robotics.
“This drone has already enabled the collection and identification of unknown species on cliffs in Hawaii and is expected to make a decisive contribution to the taxonomic and genetic study of some of the rarest endemic plant species in Madeira”, states a note sent by the University of Madeira (UMa).
Although this week, from 7 to 11 July, only some of the areas where inaccessible plant populations occur can be sampled, the collaboration that is now beginning between the entities involved will allow new and better data to be obtained in the future about the biodiversity of the Autonomous Region of Madeira and thus promote the conservation of a unique heritage on a global level.