19951 LIPPINCOTT:PSEUDOPHOENIX Principes"39(1), 1995, pp. 5-13 Reintroductionof Pseudophoenixsargentii Cenor LlPprncort' Fairchild Tropical Garden, J1935 Old Cutler Road., Miami, FL 33156, USA This is an article about restoring wild palms in ages numerous nature preserves,recently devel- their wild places. As a horticulturist, I delight in oped an elegantly simple dichotomouskey to help the cultivat'ion of palms from around the world. in deciding when species reintroductions are As an ecologist, I live with a profound senseof appropriate (Gordon 1994). First, is the species loss, knowing that some palm speciesmay exist really threatened? Are there protected popula- only in gardens,their natural habitats destroyed. tions? Is there protected habitat within the known As former Curator of Endangered Speciesat range of the species?Has the original cause of Fairchild Tropical Garden, I know that botanic speciesdecline been identified and eliminated?Are gardens are more than just pretty places. Palm verifiable and legal propagules available? Is site collectionssuch as Fairchild's provide a tantalizing managementwithin the requirementsor tolerance example of the diversity of palms that have evolved of the species? in dynamic natural systems. Yet palms grown in These questionswill be addressedin the follow- the controlled simplicity of a garden are at an ing descriptionof a relatively straightforwardrein- evolutionary dead-end.Therefore, the collections troduction project for a threatened palm species and scientific resourcesof botanic gardens should in south Florida. While not the perfect model, it be used to re-establishrare palms in appropriate is an example of a stepwiseprocess that we hope natural habitats, where species can continue to will result in a thriving and self-sustaining palrn evolve with a myriad of mingling plants and ani- population in the wild. mals. Reintroductionof plants into conservationareas is becominga more common practice in efforts to A RareFlorida Native: prevent extinction of endangeredspecies (Falk and Pseudophoenixsargentii Olwell1992). Transplanting ofan endangeredspe- Pseudophoenixsargentii H. Wend. ex Sar- cies might take place if a site is being cleared and gent, the Sargent's cherry palrn, was first discov- the plants would otherwise be destroyed, or for ered in 1886 on Elliott Key, an island ten miles restoration of a wild population that has dwindled from the shores of Miami, Florida, and was first due to human activities. While championing describedfrom specimenscollected there (Sargent endangeredspecies reintroductions, I do not advo- I 886). Soonthereafter, P seudo phoenix sargentii jannts cate into the woods to add to the flora of was found on SandsKey, adjacent.to Elliott Key, an area or to spread around specieswhich one and on Long Key, about 50 miles southwest of personally thinks should be more abundant. The Elliott Key. Even upon discovery, palm popula- motive for reintroduction should be more than an tions on these three islands were small, from a impulsive urge to right a wrong. Reintroduction few dozen to a few hundred palms. should be a carefully planned and documented A thorough and disheartening chronology of experiment in restoring a lost or abusedmember the statusof this palm speciesin the Florida Keys, speciesin a native plant community. from its discovery through the late 1950's, was Scientific staff of The Nature Conservancy,an published in an early Principes article (Ledin et international conservationorganization that man- al. 1959) (Figs. 1,2). Hundredsof theseattractive palms rdere dug up from Long Key to be sold as ornamentals, and a scraggly few remained. On I Presentaddress: Department of Botany, University of Flor- Elliott and SandsKeys, all but a few of the palms ida. P.O. Box I18526. Gainesville.FL 32611-8526. USA. were cleared for island plantations and homesites. PRINCIPES lvor. 39 l. Many Sargent's cherry palms were inadvertently destroyed in the Florida Keys by early settlers clearing hammock forests for pineapple (-.howr herej, iime, and coconut plantations. Photo by Ralph M. Munroe, courtesy of Historical Association of Southern Florida. Ten years after Ledin's surveys of.Pseudophoenix palms are found because feral Srazerssuch as sargentii, the interior of Elliott Key was bulldozed goats feast on fruits and seedlings(R. W. Read, by spiteful developersjust prior to federal pur- personal communication). Reproduction of Sar- chaseof the island for the formation of Biscayne gent's cherry palm is also compromisedby exces- National Park. By 1991, when volunteersand I sive fruit collection for livestock feed. had resurveyed all of the historical locations of In summary, the survival of wild populations the Sargent's cherry palm, no palms were found of Pseudophoenix sargentii throughout the on Long or SandsKeys, and fewer than fifty palms northern Caribbean is tenuous. In Florida, the remained on Elliott Key (for a full account, see Sargent's cherry palm has been reduced in the Lippincott 1992). last century from hundreds of palms on three palm population in islands to a few dozen palms on one island. We The small Sargent's cherry "threat- subtropical Florida is peripheral to the species' decidedthat this palm met the criteria of wider distribution along the tropical coastlinesof ened," and proceededto plan for its restoration the Bahama Islands, Hispaniola, Cuba, and the on the three Florida islandswhere it oice occurred of Mexico. Throughoutits range more abundantly. Yucatan Peninsula "reintroduction" in the northern Caribbean, Pseudophoenix' sar' Although I will use the term gentii is increasingly threatened by the activities inclusively in this article, the term is strictly defined of humans. On most of the shoreswhere it occurs' (IUCN 1984) as the re-establishmentof a species Pseudophoenix sargentii is threatened by immi which no longer exists at a site, as in this case, nent development, as impoverished Caribbean the return of Sargent'scherry palms to Long Key, nationslure foreign tourists with resorts and vaca- where palm harvesters had extirpated the wild tion homes.Mature palms are frequently dug from population. Since palms still exist on Elliott Key, natural areas and transplanted into gardens, with replanting on that island is correctly termed "restocking,'o few surviving the move. In areas such as Saona and is usually done to moderate Island, a U.S. Coast Guard basewhere the wild genetic risks associatedwith reduced population palrnsare protectedfrom harvest, almostno young size. L99sl LIPPINCOTT:PSEUDOPHOENIX * In the late I950's, Bruce Ledin (left) and Bob Read (right) searchedthe Florida Keys with Stanley Kiem for wild Sargent's cherry palms, They found only a few survivors on Long and Elliott Keys. Photo by Stanley Kiem. HabitatsPreserved but Poaching owned parks. Sands and Elliott Keys are unde- StillA Problem velopedoffshore islands in BiscayneNational Park, and Long Key is a state recreation area with Fortunately, all three of the islandswhere Sar- designatedwilderness tracts, linked to the main- gent'scherry palmonce occurred are now publicly land by U.S. Highway I. PRINCIPES lVoL. 39 3. Over thirty years after Ledin's surveys, Anne Deaton, Florida DEP biologist, maps a group of Sargent's cherry palms in the densehammock on Elliott Key. Before Hurricane Andrew in August, 1992, 47 taggedPseud'ophoenixpalms were being monitored in Biscayne National Park. Within these parks, the palms are protected Cooperationand Volunteers from overt clearing. However, unscrupulous coi- Iectors are known to continue ill"g"lly to harvest From the beginning, Biscayne National Park's fruits and seedlings from the wild, even though Natural ResourcesManager, Richard Curry, was this species is readily available in the nursery enthusiastic about mapping and monitoring the trade. As incomprehensibleas it is to me' there remaining wild palms in the park. When Dr. Ren- is apparent\ added value in the sale of wilo- ate Skinner, District Biologist for the Florida collected, versus garden-propagated,endangered Department of Natural Resources(now Depart- plants. So since the allure of possessinga plant ment of Environmental Protection, DEP) sug- collectedfrom the wild has not diminished,it was gestedreintroducing P seudophoenix sargentii Io decided that the majority of the palms would be Long Key, the logical source for seed was the reintroducedinto relatively inaccessibleareas, and extant population on Elliott Key. My work with that their exact locationswould be known only by endangered plants at Fairchild made it possible park managersand collaboratorsdirectly respon- for me to put together a cooperative agreement sible for the palms. signedby the two parks and Fairchild, and an all- l egsl LIPPINCOTT:PSEUDOPHOENIX win scheme to get this palm back into the wild DEP and praised as a model for other park dis- began. tricts. Before we could reintroduce seedlings, we The palms that we planted in this first attempt neededseed carefully collected from Elliott Key, included the one year old seedlings as well as and before we could collect seed we needed io several seven year old palms grown from seeds know the current size and condition of the wild collectedon Elliott Key in l9B4 by BNP staff and population.Beginning in 1990, various volunteers brought to Fairchild for propagation(Fig. 4, left). donated their free time to help survey the three Although somewhatlarger than optimum for trans- islandsfor wild Sargent'scherry palms.Don Evans, planting, we decided that they should