KALAHEO — Chipper Wichman sat in the Botanical Research Center at National Tropical Botanical Garden headquarters on a sunny Thursday morning, looking at a version of himself he’s never seen before.
The bronze bust was installed at the center in November bearing Wichman’s likeness, complete with a plaque that gives details of his more than 40 years working with NTBG — a testament to the impact Wichman has made on Kauai and the world.
“I tried to say ‘no’ to this, but I couldn’t. People kept asking me,” NTBG’s president said, leaning back in his chair and examining the bust, which stands about five feet high. “It’s a bit embarrassing.”
A few minutes later, a couple from Reno, Nev., wandered in the door that Wichman forgot to lock behind him, looking for directions to the visitor center.
They took in the statue while talking story, and even though Wichman didn’t mention it, it didn’t take long for them to realize they were talking with the flesh-and-blood version of the bronze bust.
Wichman gave the Nevada couple directions to the center — “just keep taking rights until you find the ocean” — and then bid them farewell.
They left saying they felt honored to meet “the man himself ” in the quiet and studious BRC, a place that houses a rare plant seed bank and a library of rare botany books, and is only occasionally open to the public.
The bust was unveiled at the BRC in November and made by sculptor J. Brett Grill of JBG Sculpture of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
NTBG Trustee Emeritus Thomas S. Kenan III, who has been an NTBG supporter for four decades, donated the bust to commemorate the “lifetime of commitment, dedication and accomplishments of Chipper Wichman and his wife and Executive Assistant Hauʻoli Wichman,” according to an NTBG release.
Alongside the bronze bust that morning, Wichman had another treasure to unveil: the honorary doctorate degree he earned last month from Florida International University, where NTBG hosts the International Center for Tropical Botany.
The university has only given out five honorary doctorates in the past 15 years.
“It was an amazing honor in recognition of my four decades of work to protect our planet,” Wichman said. “They don’t just hand them out, either. It has to go through multiple layers of approval first. Really, it is quite special.”
Wichman started working at NTBG as an intern in 1976, and throughout the years has grown NTBG to include five botanical gardens and five preserves in Hawaii and Florida.
One of those, Limahuli Garden and Preserve in Haena, was created when the Wichmans donated all of the 1,000-acre Limahuli Valley to NTBG for protection of rare plants and traditional Hawaiian cultural practices, like ahupua‘a land management.
Looking back over the past 40 years, Wichman points to two major accomplishments, the 2016 World Conservation Congress and the creation of the International Center for Tropical Botany in Florida.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s 2016 WCC event was held in Honolulu that year and brought conservationists from around the world to Hawaii and pushed Hawaii’s conservation issues to the forefront of many discussions.
It was a project that took nearly a decade to pull off, an idea that sprouted in casual conversation about Hawaii as a catalyst for worldwide conservation.
When all was said and done, Hawaii hosted 10,300 people from 192 countries in a 10-day event that cost $20 million.
The International Center for Tropical Botany in Florida took just as long to come together, with the doors opening in 2013.
“It’s super important what they’re doing because they’re teaching the next generation of tropical botanists and getting degrees to international students,” Wichman said.
After 15 years as director of NTBG, Wichman changed hats in 2019 and handed the reins over to current director Janet Mayfield, who has been working at NTBG since 1997.
Now, Wichman is NTBG president and traveling the world, partnering with conservationists and organizations.
In the end, he says, working with rare plants is a calling he’s happy to answer.
“Sometimes people ask if I get discouraged working with these disappearing plants, but the biggest kuleana (responsibility) of our generation is to not allow anything else to go extinct. That’s final,” he said. “For me, that’s inspiring.”
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Jessica Else, environment reporter, can be reached at 245-0452 or jelse@thegardenisland.com.
Mahalo to Chipper Wichman for WHAT he has done and all he is doing and will do for our whole planet really.
International Union for the Conservancy of Nature is wonderful, to say the least.
The IUCN is an enormous necessity on Earth right now considering the ongoing attack over these at least last 75 years against God’s personal Representative on Earth being none other than Mother Nature,
Nature has been the Hand That Rocks The Cradle since the beginning of Time on Earth, and especially since the beginning of Life on Earth, and that May has included all Tropical Plants, and certainly Botany itself as well.
However the eons of time have evolved, the Evolution of Life on Earth has in recent earth time included Humans…the PEOPLE.
Clearly the statistics of the HEALTH of Plants and People share a similarity, a possible extinction from multiple sources of causations.
As more and more Plant Species are becoming extinct as a Class of Botanical Life, so are single individual humans becoming “extinct” unto themselves living as little as less than a single decade (precious children) to as little as up to 5, 6, and 7 decades when clearly the potential for Life Longevity is an optimal over 100 years, and that with the Claws of Disease trying to bring humans down in their amount of actual deserved optimal number of years.
The need for an International Union for the Conservancy of Humans is a necessity whose time has come.
The Human Experiment has undergone an accelerated departure from the Caring Hand that Rocks the Cradle…of course that being Mother Nature,
The foolish departure of Mankind from Nature has been causing accelerated extinction to many Life forms, in numbers now far exceeding the natural replacement of the varied living entities. Experiments for corporate profits leads pseudo fake scientists down the path to causing extinction by pollutions.
Just alone, the predominant Care of Human Life, called medical care, is not partnered with Nature, from which we come, but from a standpoint of which pill for which ill that ails you. This system of Care, doesn’t care. Nobody is sick because they do not have enough pills. People are sick or diseased because of a CAUSE. Medical Care ignores the Cause of sickness and disease, and instead provides drugs, all which cause further ill or sickness side effects.
And inherent in the Medical System of caring for your Chronic Degenerative disease that you are going to carry to your grave, is the synthetic (Fake) chemicals (petrochemicals) made from the world’s source of the greatest pollution on Earth and its harm to diverse Life Forms including Humans and Plants.
This source of the greatest pollution of our Air, Water, Land, and Life Forms is petroleum products made from oil wells and coal mines, both being sources of the petrochemicals that make the Fake Chemicals that are put ubiquitously (meaning everywhere) in our packaged, canned, and bottled foods, and on our farms by poison sprays and synthetic chemical fertilizers.
This chemical pollution causes the vicious circle of sickness, diseases, and a weakened immune system by relying on the Disease Care Insurance Care System that only serves to ensure that you go almost exclusively only to doctors and hospitals set up to provide you with more chemicals (Drug Prescriptions), the very Chemicals in and on your food that made you sick or diseased in the first place.
We cannot put all the blame on chemicals alone because much killer disease is caused by eating animals and their bi-products like dairy.
We saw a shirt recently made from 100% Polyester, that is made from 100% oil.
Oil, Petroleum, Petrochemicals are all carcinogenic, that is why they cause Cancer in at least the Human Beings.
And people wear clothing made of 100% petroleum and then wonder why they get skin cancer when they never or rarely go in the sun. We wonder too…!
And here Mother Nature provides for FREE…Sun, Water, Air, Rest, and Exercise. Call it SWARE. (Well, our water used to be free back in the day.)
But, while SWARE, may not be an entire cure for disease, its proper amount of use is certainly part of the PREVENTION. Some say Prevention is the cure; or an ounce of Prevention is worth a pound of Cure. SWARE relies on Nature.
Getting back to relying on Nature is the key to open the door to a Healthy future, for plants, animals and humans.
“Cracking” Plant and Animal genes open to modify them is a slap in the face of Mother Nature, and a sudden, perhaps permanent irreversible departure from God’s Will, especially when it is done for corporate profit.
GMO taking a chance with Nature, and where it stops nobody knows…maybe extinction of ourselves and the precious vital plants and food God Created, and Mother Nature nurtures with her billions if not trillions of years of proven experience and proven effective success rate.
Part of our demise of the humans is that those who eat animals that are dosed with medicines, antibiotics, hormones, overfed, salted, and slaughtered are not providing themselves with highest and best nutrition for humans, after all we lack the requisite fangs and claws for meat eating., and we also lack the short torso length digestive tract of carnivores.
And we are presented a Vicious Circle by the corporate food industry saturated with chemicals and partnered by a strange coincidence with the combined entities of opportunistic capitalism relying on insurance, the oil industry, petrochemicals, Big PHARMAceuticals, and Hospitals and doctors to distribute drugs that will require you to keep your slow accumulating disease for the rest of your life, with no sane alternative offered unless you leave the poisonous grip of drugs disbursed by an antiquated failed system, the Disease / Drug system called HELLth Care.
The understanding that Chipper Wichman has for Nature and our need to conserve it, so too aptly applies to the human need of NATURE, to steer us away from extinction.
Travel the world, eh? In what, a rowboat? While i congratulate the establishment of the gardens, the hypocrisy runs deep.