• The Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve is a 12-hectare (30-acre) estate on Eleuthera, an island in the Bahamas, dedicated to conserving and educating people about the island-nation’s native plants.
• Since 2009, resident botanist Ethan Freid has led a local restoration effort prioritizing native plants of the Bahamas’ subtropical dry forest ecosystem.
• The Levy preserve also offers a summer internship for university students interested in environmental science and biology, which teaches them about native plant taxonomy — filling a generational knowledge gap.
• Though small in scale, the project provides a haven for the Bahamas’ native plants; has a herbarium of plant specimens for research; and manages an online digital database of Caribbean plant species.