Haiti is home to an incredible flora of around 5,000 documented plant species. Within these, over 210 endemic shrub and tree species have been identified. These plants have only one home in the world, and it is here. Many other species have small distributions in the Caribbean, which is a biodiversity hotspot.
While our flora is beautiful and important, it is not well documented, and the information we do have is held in many disjointed locations. This makes it hard to understand the health of our amazing species: their distributions, number of populations, and the health of those populations. Without the basic knowledge of where our plants exist, action cannot be taken to conserve them.
This is a great example of using ArcGIS StoryMaps to tell a critical story in the botanical world.
