As numbers of wild plants have dwindled, Haleakala National Park staff and affiliated scientists have been gathering seeds from flowering silverswords and cultivating the seedlings in greenhouses. Then they provide some plants for scientific research and outplant others in their natural habitat with the help of youth and adult volunteers.

In 2016 the park started a partnership with Maui public schools in which, as of their most recent session in October, students have planted about 3,000 Haleakala silverswords at the summit.

“We have 86% survival rate of all the plants planted,” said horticulturist Michelle Osgood. “We estimate that there are around 2,500 total surviving plants.” 

While the silversword is currently designated as federally threatened, human intervention has brought back the plant from even more dire straits — the brink of extinction — before.

In 1927 there were only 100 silverswords growing on the slopes of Haleakala Crater, where cattle had been grazed from 1888 to 1922, and other ungulates such as pigs, deer, sheep and goats also trampled and devoured the plants.

A Hawaii National Park, including a Haleakala Section, was established by Congress in 1916, and things began to look up in 1934 when the Civilian Conservation Corps started building facilities such as the backcountry cabins and the Haleakala Visitor Center at the summit. In 1961 Haleakala National Park and Volcanoes National Park were redesignated as separate entities, and fencing of the Haleakala park boundary to keep out ungulates began in 1974.

Although the forces behind its current decline — climate change and increasingly dry weather — can’t be fenced out, human efforts to preserve ahinahina provide some much-needed hope for its survival: Osgood has already sown an additional 1,000 seeds to be planted next fall.

>> READ MORE: Maui’s rare silversword plants on Haleakala are dying from increased warmth and drought