To the Board of Trustees and Executives
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
GPO Box 1164
Hobart TAS 7001
Australia
Letter of Support
Dear Ms Mulcahy, Mr Steward, Mr Catchpole and Members of the Executive Board,
as a group of herbarium directors and curators from Germany we are writing to express our serious concern about the planned re-organisation and severe budget cuts at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
The pivotal role of biological diversity for human well-being is nowadays universally acknowledged. Scientific collections play an important role as archives of the past and present diversity of life as well as hubs for scientific research generating the knowledge necessary for targeted conservation measures. Tasmania’s biodiversity is particularly rich as witnessed by the UNESCO’s inscription of the Tasmanian Wilderness in the World Heritage List. Documenting and studying this diversity is a responsibility best fulfilled by regional institutions and specialists.
However, natural history collections are not islands entire of themselves, but part of a universal network of institutions and scientists. This network of scientists relies on access to regional collections and regional expertise for taxonomical and population genetic research, the creation of inventories, Red List assessments, research on invasive species, modelling studies and many more. The proposed cuts in staff would reduce the capacities to exchange material for research and to deal with compliance and permit issues. This would seriously compromise TMAG’s ability to contribute to ongoing and future international collaborations. Furthermore, the proposed re-organisation would leave Tasmania without any experts in the field of non-vascular plants and fungi, which together account for half of her exceptionally rich biodiversity. This expertise, once lost, is extremely difficult and expensive to re-build.
Collectively, the herbaria curated by us hold c. 15 million specimens. As part of our daily work we do not only curate the material housed in our institutions. We send out and receive loans of specimens for scientific research, share our expertise with stakeholders and the general public and support collaborative research which, just like biodiversity itself, transcends national borders.
We are therefore deeply concerned about the potential loss of access to collections from Tasmania as well as the loss of local expertise and respectfully ask you to do everything in your power to persuade the Australian Government to abandon its planned cuts to TMAG.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Christian Printzen
Curator of Cryptogams
Herbarium Senckenbergianum Frankfurt (FR)
Prof. Dr. Stefan Wanke
Head of Department Botany and Molecular Evolution
Senckenberg Research Institute, Frankfurt
Dr. Juraj Paule
Head of Herbarium Collections
Botanical Garden Berlin (B)
Freie Universität Berlin
Dr. Robert Lücking
Head of Research
Botanical Garden Berlin
Freie Universität Berlin
Prof. Dr. Christine Römermann
Director, Herbarium Haussknecht (JE)
Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form andHamburgense (HBG)
Prof. Dr. Karsten Wesche
Director, Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Görlitz
Senckenberg Natural History Collections Dresden
Dr. Matthias Schultz
Senior Curator, Herbarium Hamburgense (HBG)
Dr. Holger Thüs
Curator of fungi, bryophytes & algae
Natural History Museum Stuttgart (STU)
Prof. Dr. Gudrun Kadereit
Institute of Systematics, Biodiversity and Evolution of Plants and
Director, Botanische Staatssammlung München (M)
PD Dr. Andreas Beck
Curator of Lichens and Bryophytes
Deputy Director, Botanische Staatssammlung München (M)
Prof. Dr. Julia Bechteler
Bryophyte Ecology and Evolution
Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function, Jena
Letter of Support from German herbarium Directors.pdf
