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Photography by Ben Nyberg
In July 2025, NTBG’s GIS and drone program coordinator, Dr. Ben Nyberg, traveled to Madeira Island, 350 miles off the coast of Morocco. Madeira, an autonomous region of Portugal, is a volcanic island roughly half the size of Kauaʻi with dramatic steep cliffs and a diverse sub-tropical flora.
As part of an existing partnership between NTBG and the University of Madeira and the Grupo de Botanica da Madeira, Ben visited Madeira with a drone and the Mamba remote controlled robotic collecting arm to build on drone work conducted in 2022-23. Ben’s previous collaboration on Madeira located several unidentifiable plant species growing in inaccessible cliff habitats. Using a drone and the Mamba to reach the cliff-dwelling plants, Ben and his partners successfully collected three species of conservation importance — two of which may be new to science.
A showy cluster of Aeonium glandulosum (Crassulaceae) flowers on a rocky cliff. Madeira is home to two endemic species of Aeonium, both known globally as popular houseplants.
Perched over a steep ravine, Echium nervosum displays its flowers in Madeira’s coastal habitat.
The showy blue floral spikes of pride of Madeira (Echium candicans) are all but hidden from view, growing on a remote cliff face on the island’s rugged interior.
A coastal scene from São Vicente on the north shore of Madeira includes Echium nervosum perched on a cliff overlooking the North Atlantic.
The Mamba robotic collecting arm, developed through a partnership between NTBG at researchers at Outreach Robotics in Quebec, Canada, was deployed in the cliff areas of Curral das Freiras (“Pen of the Nuns”) to collect unidentified plants that were previously mapped in 2022.
Belonging to the bellflower family (Campanulaceae), Musschia aurea reveals its flowers in a vertical cliff habitat. The genus comprises three species, all of which are endemic to Madeira.
All drone photography by Dr. Ben Nyberg
