Events
Bishop Museum Unveils Seed Bank at Its 2024 Science & Sustainability Festival
Bishop Museum unveils a Native seed storage facility donated by Terraformation that can store up to 5 million seeds, enough to restore up to 5,000 acres of land every year.
# Bishop Museum Unveils Seed Bank at Its 2024 Science & Sustainability Festival
Together with its community partners, the Native seed storage facility will help restore up to 5,000 acres of land every year
Honolulu, Hawaiʻi — Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, the State of Hawai'i Museum of Natural and Cultural History, will unveil a new installation during its 2024 Science & Sustainability Festival.
The Bishop Museum Seed Bank is a Native seed storage facility housed in a 40-foot shipping container located on the Museum's Great Lawn, on the Ewa-side of the Richard T. Mamiya Science Adventure Center. Donated by Terraformation, a global forest restoration company based in Hawaiʻi, the Seed Bank includes everything needed to dry, process, and store up to 5 million seeds, enough to restore up to 5,000 acres of land every year.
"On any given beautiful Hawaiian day, if you look towards the Koʻolau mountain range, it appears green and lush. Most people don't realize that what they're looking at are forests consisting of mostly alien species," said Tim Gallaher, Ph.D., Bishop Museum curator of Botany. "With the help of several community partners, the Seed Bank is working on restoring our Hawaiian forests with plants native to the ecosystem, and strengthen our islands' precious biodiversity."
Seeds are strategically gathered for specific restoration projects and stored in the Seed Bank for only as long as needed. They're then germinated, grown to a suitable size, and planted back into natural areas by community partners including Gill ʻEwa Lands, Mānoa Cliff Trail Restoration Project, and Protect & Preserve Hawaiʻi.
"We've already collected more than 31,000 seeds representing 21 Native species, and we're just getting started," said Nick Walvoord, Bishop Museum Seed Bank collection manager. "Additionally, the installation also presents opportunities to provide hands-on education and future public programs for our keiki and visitors."
The Seed Bank features an outdoor deck for demonstrations and events, and the container is beautifully painted by Worldwide Walls-featured artist, Ran Noveck.
Ran is a Honolulu-based artist, designer, and muralist concentrating on fine art, murals, and community based projects to clean and beautify communities while remembering Hawaiian traditions and culture "depicted in the art to provoke talk story." Excited about the positive environmental impacts of the Seed Bank, Ran and the Museum's Botany team collaborated on a mural depicting Native plants that would have grown on the Bishop Museum campus before modern alternations to the landscape were made. The mural represents a nod to the past and our collective hope for future ecosystem restoration throughout Hawaiʻi.
"It's been a lot of fun working with Ran," said Gallaher, noting that the artist previously painted a mural of a heʻe (octopus) on the Museum's campus. "His murals typically include his signature swooshes. In our case, we asked for the swooshes to be brownish-red. This represented Kaiwi'ula, the land on which Bishop Museum sits."
Gallaher and Walvoord envision the Bishop Museum Seed Bank to not only work with partners on conservation and restoration efforts throughout Hawaiʻi, but also be a space where guests can learn about our islands' precious biodiversity and the work being done to preserve it, firsthand.
"Come visit me and the Seed Bank at this Saturday's Science & Sustainability Festival," invited Walvoord. "Along with more than 40 other Museum and community partner booths and activities, you'll also be able to see the various stages of the plants we care for at the Seed Bank, and how and where they're distributed."
Bishop Museum's 2024 Science & Sustainability Festival will be held on Saturday, April 20 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., throughout the Museum's 15-acre campus. Admission is just $5 for kamaʻāina and military with ID; learn more at BishopMuseum.org.
About Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, the State of Hawaiʻi Museum of Natural and Cultural History
Bishop Museum’s mission is to inspire our community and visitors through the exploration, celebration, and perpetuation of the extraordinary history, culture, and environment of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. The Museum was founded in 1889 by Charles Reed Bishop in memory of his wife Bernice Pauahi Bishop, a royal descendant of King Kamehameha I. Today, the Museum thrives as an educational center for the community and is widely regarded as the world’s premier institution for Hawaiian and Pacific content.
Bishop Museum’s vast collections of more than 25 million objects and specimens represent nine disciplines and include more than 22 million biological specimens, over 2 million cultural objects, 115,000 historical publications, and 1 million photographs, films, works of art, audio recordings, and manuscripts. These collections tell the stories of the cultures and biodiversity of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific as well as the proud legacy of scholarly research spanning 130 years.
Bishop Museum proudly serves more than 200,000 visitors each year, including 20,000 children on school visits. Guests are encouraged to pre-plan their trip to #HawaiisMuseum with its free digital guide, available through Bloomberg Connects.
To learn more about the Museum’s research, collections, exhibits, and programs, visit BishopMuseum.org, follow @BishopMuseum on Facebook and Instagram, visit Bishop Museum’s YouTube channel, or call (808) 847-3511. Bishop Museum is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Bishop Museum is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer, and welcomes applicants from the military, veterans, and those with disabilities. Learn about careers at Bishop Museum at BishopMuseum.org/Careers and on its LinkedIn page.
Bishop Museum Press is Hawaiʻi’s oldest book publisher and one of the first scholarly publishers in the Western Hemisphere, and has published over 1,200 titles and distributed over 1 million books in 72 countries worldwide. Bishop Museum hosts a restaurant and gift shop on campus, Tūtū’s Place by Highway Inn and Shop Pacifica by Nā Mea Hawaiʻi.