48 hours to find a new place
Administrators at a Louisiana university are busy sweeping away pesky useless shit like scientific specimens to make room for athletic facilities.
The curators of the Museum of Natural History at the University of Louisiana-Monroe got grim news last week from the school’s director: The museum’s research collection had to be moved out of its current home. The reason? The space was needed for expanded track facilities.
The curators were given 48 hours to find a new place on campus to store the collection — something they weren’t able to do. Now they must get another institution to take their several million specimens. Their hard deadline is July, when the track renovations are slated to begin. And if the collection isn’t moved by then, curators said, it will be destroyed.
Making America great again, eh? Less emphasis on research and education, and more on racing around in a circle.
The ULM collection includes some 6 million fish collected by ULM ichthyologist Neil Douglas, one of the leading experts on the fish of Louisiana, as well as half a million native plants. It is an important record of biodiversity in northern Louisiana — a region that stands to see significant environmental impacts as a result of climate change.
Robert Gropp, co-executive director of the American Institute of Biological Sciences and policy director for the Natural Science Collections Alliance, said that smaller collections like this one offer unmatched insight into the history and fate of specific ecosystems.
“Sometimes those collections might be the world-class collection for that specific geographic area because that’s where those researchers spent their careers collecting specimens,” he said. “They’re snapshots of the history, of the genetics and biodiversity, and what lived where and how they interacted. You can’t go back and collect those again.”
Oh who cares; the university will have better running facilities! That’s the important thing. Won’t somebody please think of the athletes?
These research specimens — and the curators who study them — have immense scientific value, said Larry Page, a curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History. They are the basis for almost all taxonomic research and are vital to understanding changes in the health and distribution of species. Collections-based research has resulted in the discovery of new species and has helped save creatures on the brink of extinction.
“In a period of rapid changes in the environment and climate, specimens in natural history collections serve as the benchmark for gauging the impact,” Page wrote in an email. “The loss of such large and valuable collections as those at the University of Louisiana at Monroe would be a tremendous tragedy to science.”
It’s rare for a collection to be thrown out entirely; another institution usually steps in to save it. Already, several institutions have offered the ULM museum help in relocating its collection.
But Gropp, the American Institute of Biological Sciences co-director, noted that consolidation of collections means more and more specimens are being studied and cared for by fewer people with fewer resources.
“The system as a whole is being stressed,” he said.
Even if the collection is saved, the people who were studying it won’t go with it.
Nero burning Rome. Trump, ISIS, a-Q — minor differences.
Oh and even less of a difference to Boko Haram.
I wonder if the athletes even know what is being done supposedly for their benefit.
“a less well-educated, but physically healthy individual with a sound, firm character, full of determination and willpower, is more valuable to the … community than an intellectual weakling.”
The above seemed apt. Attribution unnecessary.
Why are people so down on Boko Haram? Whiter Shade of Pale wasn’t that bad.
Perhaps,under the present administration, “gauging the impact of climate change” is not something that should be emphasized.
5 AoS:
Ahah. Took me a while to process the token but now I hear the light. Or did you mean Weird Al Q?
Sounds like there might even be some type specimens in there – those should never be destroyed, since they are the ones that determined the features by which the species is described. That could be very horrifying.
But, oh, let’s not get in the way of the real work of schools – sporting competitions that amuse the masses.
When University of Oklahoma (hereafter known as OU) got their new president in the nineties, everyone was screaming and wailing (and gnashing of teeth) because he was focused on improving the academic rigor and quality of the school. What did he think he was doing? OU at that time had a losing football team, and he didn’t seem to be worried about that, only about unimportant things like, was the medical school turning out a high quality of doctor or were the MBAs suitably math-savvy.
In the early aughts, when the team started winning again, some of the instructors were worried that this would mean a reduction in the quality of education. They had seen an increase in focus on educational quality during the period the team was losing (OU fans are notoriously fickle, and can’t tolerate losing, or even winning by just a few points). I don’t know what the situation has been since then, since I am no longer in contact with OU faculty, but since their football coach is one of the highest paid in the nation, I have my doubts that education is a focus anymore.
I am so glad to work at a school that doesn’t have a sports team!