A onetime rancher wages lonely war to save rare plants Working alone, by hand, one man is turning 100 acres of alien trees into a refuge for Hawaii's endangered botanical treasures Keith Robinson hauls a tree into the reserve. Within minutes, dozens of guavas are brought to their knees, and Hawaii's winter sun shines on a new clearing. A month later, when the rains begin, Robinson will clear the slash with fire and zap recidivist shoots with an herbicide. He'll leave the area fallow for a couple of years while he clears another section, then he'll bring back the native flora-seedling by seedling, plant by plant. After ten years, plants of some 80 native Hawaiian species adorn his Kauai Wildlife Reserve, ranging from purest yellow hibiscus to red-flowered Kokia , rare white gardenias to delicate frilly Hibiscadelphus .
Some species are down to their last few individuals in the wild.
Robinson is a botanically xenophobic Robin Hood whose dream is to reestablish an authentic prehuman piece of Hawaii, a place now awash with introduced species of plants and animals. The first person in his ranching family to graduate from an agronomy department, he is a tough, balding man of 55, always dressed in work shirt and jeans. After looking at Tahiti and America's Northwest Coast, they landed in Honolulu in 1863, in search of real estate. Not long after that the family acquired another 34 square miles on neighboring Kauai. Niihau became a cattle and sheep ranch, as did parts of the Kauai holdings.