Abstract
Simple SummaryIt is a core task of collecting institutions like museums to take examples of animals and preserve them as specimens in collections. In the twenty-first century, museums are equally the places where research is conducted and education is promoted in the service of conservation of animals in an era of the decline of biodiversity. In this paper, the balance of co-operation between collecting of animals by museums and the promotion and scientific pursuit of conservation of fauna in those museums is considered. As a “challenge” to museum science, it is considered in the context of Australia's oldest museum, and its policy and practice in the current century.Collecting of animals from their habitats for preservation by museums and related bodies is a core operation of such institutions. Conservation of biodiversity in the current era is a priority in the scientific agendas of museums of natural heritage in Australia and the world. Intuitively, to take animals from the wild, while engaged in scientific or other practices that are supposed to promote their ongoing survival, may appear be incompatible. The Australian Museum presents an interesting ground to consider zoological collecting by museums in the twenty-first century. Anderson and Reeves in 1994 argued that a milieu existed that undervalued native species, and that the role of natural history museums, up to as late as the mid-twentieth century, was only to make a record the faunal diversity of Australia, which would inevitably be extinct. Despite the latter, conservation of Australia's faunal diversity is a key aspect of research programmes in Australia's institutions of natural heritage in the current era. This paper analyses collecting of animals, a core task for institutions of natural heritage, and how this interacts with a professed “conservation ethic” in a twenty-first century Australian setting.
Highlights
Interest in collecting, especially in the natural sciences, has recently arisen in the history and philosophy of science and other fields
This paper explores how zoological collecting by museums in Australia interacts with the museum policy and practice aiding conservation of biodiversity and environmental planning
Anderson and Reeves argue that collecting by museums and other institutions in Australia was affected by a milieu that “consistently undervalued native flora and fauna” [14] and that the purpose of museum collecting was to preserve a record of Australian species, but not to promote their conservation in the wild, a view prevalent until the mid-twentieth century [14]
Summary
Especially in the natural sciences, has recently arisen in the history and philosophy of science and other fields. Anderson and Reeves argue that collecting by museums and other institutions in Australia was affected by a milieu that “consistently undervalued native flora and fauna” [14] and that the purpose of museum collecting was to preserve a record of Australian species, but not to promote their conservation in the wild, a view prevalent until the mid-twentieth century [14]. If zoological collecting is parts of crucial work in biodiversity conservation, certain pressures are placed on how that collecting is conducted It is the need for a record of animal species, and their populations and distribution, past and present that is needed to be able to determine decline or change in native fauna, which is what is termed in this paper, the “challenge of conservation” for a collecting institution in the twenty-first century. Within the museum model, collecting of specimens for preservation is a core function of such institutions, but conservation of biodiversity entails seeking the continuation of species in the wild—can museum collecting of animals and a conservation ethic co-exist simultaneously?
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