San Francisco shrub protected

First of all, welcome to Epoch!  Here I will be posting news, information, and sightings relating to rare species!  Whether they are endangered, threatened, or just endemic to a small region of the planet, these species are made sacred by their scarcity.  I hope to photograph and describe these animals, plants and fungi, some of which are on the brink of disappearing from the universe forever.  My goal is to set up a space where we can all appreciate these treasures that Earth has given us.

Anyway, onto the exciting news:

A. h. franciscana is transplanted to a new safe home.

A San Francisco Bay Area shrub has been listed as federally endangered after being thought extinct and then rediscovered near the Golden Gate Bridge.

The Franciscan manzanita (Arctostaphylos hookeri franciscana), a subspecies of Hooker's manzanita, gained protection Wednesday under the Endangered Species Act.  Before being spotted near a construction site by a botanist in 2009, the shrub was thought to be extinct, its last stronghold having been bulldozed in 1947.  The plant's rediscovery was celebrated by officials and environmentalists.

“It was like all the lions in the wild were gone and we thought that there were none left . . . and suddenly someone finds a wild pair,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Sarah Swenty said.

From the AP:

Officials have proposed about 300 acres around the city and the Presidio Trust, mostly on government park land, where the ground-hugging shrub can grow again. Swenty said that people have already started growing the plant again in the Presidio. 

Environmental groups say the native shrub is special because it has evolved to survive tough Bay Area conditions, including heavy fog that blocks sunlight and low nutrient, high metal soil. But groups say the plant couldn’t evolve to fight the bulldozers and development that brought it to the brink of extinction. 

“It’s an essential component of a very rare ecosystem that one flourished in San Francisco,” said Brent Plater, executive director of the Wild Equity Institute. 

The plant can also be found in botanic gardens, and hybrid descendants have been sold.

Although the quote from Ms. Swenty suggests that two specimens of this manzanita remain, the AP article seemed to suggest that just one was spotted and transplanted.  What I'm wondering is, how will these one or two individuals establish a diverse enough population?

The Presidio Trust sounds like a good place for a field trip . . .