Heavy deforestation had eliminated most of the island's forests by the first half of the 17th century, and the once common toromiro became rare and ultimately extinct in the wild in the 1960s.

However, all tablets of native wood tested by modern methods have turned out to be Thespesia populnea, known as miro or milo in some Polynesian languages.

[2] David Attenborough describes the timber from which a small wooden male sculpture in his possession is made, having been identified by Kew Gardens as Sophora toromiro.

[3] The tree is being reintroduced to the island in a scientific project partly led jointly by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Gothenburg Botanical Garden, where the only remaining plants of this species with a documented origin were propagated in the 1960s from seeds collected from a single tree by Thor Heyerdahl.

[4] The Jardin du Val Rahmeh, a botanical garden in Menton in the south of France, is dedicated to the acclimatization and conservation of rare species, including Sophora toromiro.