Specialized teams of rangers from Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park rappelled nearly 200 feet into a remote pit crater last week, but they weren’t looking for an injured hiker.

The mission was to save four endangered native plant species from extinction.

The park rangers, joined by the Hawaii County Fire Department and Pohakuloa Training Area’s fire management team, scaled down sheer walls of a forested pit crater at the 4,000-foot elevation.

The pit has been a haven for rare endangered native plants because of its inaccessi-bility.

Seeds and cuttings were taken from the four plants by the rangers who descended into the crater during a 12-hour mission.

National park officials said the seeds and cuttings will be used to help re-establish the plant species.

The plants included the haha, or Cyanea stictophylla, a species related to the haha known as Cyanea pilosa; an odorless Hawaiian mint of the genus Phyllostegia; and a native shrub in the African violet family, ha‘i­wale, or Cyrtandra lysiosepala.

In a 1996 inventory, only 20 plants of the Cyanea stictophylla species were estimated to be alive in the wild — all of them on Hawaii island, the national park said.