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An entomologist trying to identify a rare beetle turns to a national
collection only to find that the specimen in question is damaged beyond
repair. Elsewhere, a unique fossil lies crumbling in a forgotten case, a
sorry end for a relic that survived millions of years preserved in anaerobic
muds. These are not uncommon scenarios in museums throughout the world.
For decades, the poor state of many collections has been worrying biologists,
and there have been repeated calls for funds to conserve them properly.
Sorry tales abound of leaky buildings, plagues of beetles, poorly prepared
specimens and unsuitable display cases. Millions of specimens are deteriorating
fast.

In the heyday of natural history in the 18th and 19th centuries, collectors
roamed the world in search of specimens of native flora and fauna. The
collections that they founded have often been left to languish, yet in the
art world such neglect would be regarded as a scandal. Curators of the
great art collections have long enjoyed access to funds which allow them
to pay high sums for a single work of art, and to restore and conserve such
showpieces. Biological collections deserve to be equally valued – and the
sooner the better. As species dwindle, they are becoming increasingly difficult,
if not impossible, to replace. Many contain type specimens – the original
specimen that defines the species – that are fundamental to taxonomic research.
Others provide data on the environment at the time they were collected,
or hold the key to the evolution of particular groups of animals and plants.

The extent of the problem can be seen from a survey completed at the
end of last year by the North West Collections Research Unit, an independent
group which collects data on natural science collections in the 61 museums
in northwest England. It found nearly 20 per cent of the 8.3 million specimens
in need of rehousing and 1 in 10 specimens needing active conservation.
Much of the deterioration had been caused by simple neglect: delicate specimens
left too close to hot water pipes or in a damp atmosphere were typical.
Almost 90 per cent of the specimens were not even catalogued. The unit estimates
that Pounds sterling 4.1 million is needed to bring the specimens up to
standard and to document them.

The sad state of biological collections in Britain was brought into
focus in 1987, after the Museums Association in London surveyed 254 natural
history collections. The author of the resulting report, Bernice Williams,
who was then a medical entomologist at the University of Cambridge, suggested
that two million specimens were in need of urgent conservation and a further
seven million were in an ‘indifferent’ condition. Two-thirds of the museums
admitted losing specimens – and sometimes whole collections – through neglect.

Nearly a fifth of the museums blamed bad storage for damage to their
collections, while 1 in 10 said infestations had caused the damage. Fifteen
per cent attributed the damage to poor curatorship. One museum reported
losing a collection of 2500 insects through neglect, another lost 40 per
cent of its collection of birds to the ravages of clothes moths, while the
vertebrate collection at a third was destroyed by an infestation of insects.

Worldwide, the situation is no better. Francis Howie, safety and conservation
adviser at the Natural History Museum in London, carried out an international
survey of 100 museums and other institutions in 1992. He estimates there
are 2.5 billion biological specimens held in public collections. Of these,
he says, at least a third are in an extremely poor state and each year 30
million deteriorate to a point where they are no longer of any value.

Despite this appalling catalogue of losses, museum staff see a glimmer
of hope. It stems from the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in the summer
of 1992, which brought together the environmentalists and representatives
from governments around the globe. It was at Rio that the notion of biodiversity
began to penetrate the consciousness of many politicians. One of the sets
of resolutions considered in Rio came from the first international symposium
on the preservation and conservation of natural history collections, which
had taken place a few weeks earlier in Madrid.

The symposium produced a range of recommendations designed to safeguard
collections, including research into conservation, improved databases and
the training of conservators. Crucially, the delegates linked the fate of
crumbling specimens in museums to the dangers facing their living relatives.
Only by understanding how modern biodiversity has developed can we hope
to conserve and manage the ecosystems left to us, and well-managed collections
are essential for such research. This line of argument could be the salvation
of natural history collections, museum staff say.

The challenge is to convince the public, administrators and politicians
of the increasing rarity value of biological collections. Curators have
always had to battle against the public perception that such collections
are easily replaceable. Now, people are beginning to recognise that populations
of animals and plants cannot withstand constant collecting. Some species
could even disappear altogether.

IT’S PEANUTS

There is a stark contrast between the low priority given to natural
history specimens and the high value placed on art collections. The fortune
spent on restoring and preserving works of art continues to grate with many
curators. Just £4 million is needed to bring the collections in northwest
England up to scratch. ‘It’s peanuts,’ says Mike Graham, chairman of the
Biology Curators Group. ‘An art gallery might pay £30 million for
a painting, yet a lot of the material we hold comes from animals that are
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Charles Pettitt, keeper of invertebrate zoology at Manchester Museum
and chairman of the Federation for Natural Sciences Collection Research
Units, argues that the museums should start by conducting a valuation of
the specimens in their biological collections. This, he says, would teach
both curators and the public the importance of the collections. ‘Rarely
do we buy collections, so there is little awareness of their worth,’ he
says.

It should not be too hard to place a monetary value on collections where
there is a market for a particular type of specimen. Fossils, for example,
are generally purchased from professional collectors and, unless similar
fossils are later found in large numbers, they tend to keep their value
over the years. Where there is no market, however, valuing a collection
is more difficult but a museum could calculate how much it would cost to
replace a specimen, whether by mounting a collecting expedition or by buying
a similar one from another museum.

But pricing specimens has its downside, Pettitt admits. While putting
a high value on a rare fossil should highlight the need to conserve it properly,
the financial committee of a cash-strapped museum might see that same fossil
as a source of income and demand that it be sold. There is also the danger
that putting a price tag on specimens will inhibit research. ‘People who
work in humanities are always amazed when we send things halfway round the
world and do not insure them,’ says Pettitt. If a high value is put on a
specimen, museums will have to find money for insurance. ‘If we find our
type specimens are expensive to insure, then they might become too valuable
to send to researchers,’ he explains.

Dick Hendry, natural history conservator for Glasgow Museums, would
prefer to emphasise the importance of the collections and the reasons for
their preservation. ‘We have to stress,’ he says, ‘that the data on the
numbers and history of whole populations is sitting in museums and we can’t
afford to lose it.’

Well-organised and properly maintained collections, he argues, can
provide the source material for much biological research. For example,
individual specimens can provide ‘environmental snapshots’ of the time
they were collected. The best-known instances of this are the studies of
eggs of birds of prey in various collections, which revealed that eggshells
became thinner just at the time that the use of DDT and similar pesticides
was on the increase. These studies helped link pesticide use to the fall
in numbers of birds of prey. More locally, stored specimens of species such
as algae and lichens that respond to levels of pollutants such as heavy
metals and sulphur dioxide can give an accurate picture of environmental
conditions at the time they were collected.

Important as it is for museum staff to convince the public of the value
of their natural history collections, there is an even more urgent need
to establish how best to conserve them. ‘We do not even know how to store
our stuffed animals safely,’ says Hendry. ‘For years we’ve been draping
skins over manikins made of polyurethane foam but we’ve no idea how long
the foam will last or what it will do to the skins.’

Moreover, traditional methods of preservation are being called into
question as natural history collections are put to new uses. Lately, biologists
have taken to analysing fragments of DNA from the remains of animals in
order to study the way populations and species have developed (‘Fact, fiction
and fossil DNA’, New ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, 29 January). They are finding that the conservation
techniques that served to prevent one kind of decay can also destroy the
very thing they now want to study.

As well as a lack of cash, there is also a shortage of people to do
the research into conservation techniques that is so badly needed. The contrast
with the art world is, once again, striking. In 1992, Velson Horie of Manchester
Museum’s conservation department estimated there were more than 1400 professional
conservators concerned with Britain’s humanities collections, compared with
fewer than 20 safeguarding natural history collections. And when Howie reviewed
research papers published between 1935 and 1992, he found ten times as many
on art conservation as on biological conservation. Things are not getting
any better: the number of publications dealing specifically with preserving
biological specimens fell by a fifth between 1990 and 1992.

Some universities provide training in natural history conservation as
part of postgraduate courses in museum studies, but compared with the various
postgraduate courses in art conservation this is thin fare. Where there
are natural science options, they are not necessarily taken up by students,
says Simon Knell, a lecturer in museum studies and collection management
at the University of Leicester. ‘ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´s don’t think of museums as logical
career paths,’ he comments. Less than 10 per cent of the places on Leicester’s
museum studies course are taken up by scientists.

Even if more would-be conservators signed up for courses, there are
not enough experienced people to train them, according to Chris Collins,
who organises courses in geological conservation at the University of Cambridge’s
department of earth sciences. ‘There’s no history of conservation in natural
history sciences,’ says Collins. ‘The emphasis is in research rather than
the object itself.’ As a result, natural scientists tend to be interested
in preservation as a means to carry out their research, or so that specimens
can be put on display for a particular exhibition. They carry out the work
themselves, whereas most big art collections have departments dedicated
to conservation.

‘The problem with biological conservation is that it’s back-room work
and labour-intensive,’ says Collins. ‘Five or six years of training is needed
to work on something.’ He is about to start running an MSc course in natural
science conservation that will include the preparation of specimens, controlling
the environment in which they are kept, and the ethics of conservation.
‘The aim of the conservator is to stabilise the object with the minimum
of intervention,’ he says. This, however, can be at odds with the emphasis
in some museums on displaying objects to best effect rather than with least
interference.

CONFLICTING ROLES

This debate is reflected in arguments about the role of the museums
themselves and the ways in which they are organised and funded. At the Natural
History Museum in London, for example, the conflict has sharpened over
the past few years as the museum has had to attract the paying public while
maintaining its role as a research centre. The collections might be the
reason for the museum’s existence, but less than 10 per cent of its annual
budget goes on conserving the 67 million specimens its collections hold.

In Britain’s provincial museums another conflict surfaces. A local authority
might be prepared to fund collections of regional interest but be less inclined
to devote local resources to looking after a collection of national importance.
If it’s such an important national collection, why aren’t national funds
available to help conserve it, councillors want to know.

Since the Madrid symposium in 1992, however, natural history conservation
has at least started to be recognised as a discipline in its own right.
The event also triggered debate within the museum world. Last month, a meeting
of museum staff from some of Britain’s major natural history collections
looked at ways of avoiding duplication in their research and collecting
policies, and set out to identify the most important collections and to
make sure that the money available for collections is used to best effect.

At local level, museums are managing to find some money for training.
Regional units are publishing comprehensive registers of the collections
in their area, following ten years of work documenting them. The Federation
for Natural Sciences Collection Research Units hopes that regional units
will follow the northwest’s lead in evaluating the state of the collections
in the areas they cover. This will give them figures to take to the government
when asking for the money needed to preserve them, says Pettitt.

While museum staff are optimistic that the situation is improving, the
momentum must be maintained. Progress so far has been but one small step
towards bringing natural history collections up to the standard of their
fine art counterparts. There remains an urgent need to train conservators,
to develop long-term programmes for preserving biological specimens, and
for research into conservation techniques. And that means more funds, a
fact the government cannot afford to ignore. As Howie told the Madrid conference:
‘The loss of natural science collections only foreshadows the loss of natural
diversity itself.’

Jane Seymour is a journalist based in London.

* * *

Perils of being collected

The hazards faced by biological collections range from simple neglect
through chemical reactions with surrounding materials or infestation by
beetles and other insects, to catastrophes such as fire or flood.

The environment in which specimens are kept must be carefully controlled.
If the atmosphere is too dry, minerals can become desiccated and brittle.
Plant material may also be at risk, especially when mounted on paper that
dries out. But humidity mustn’t be too high, either. A moist atmosphere
can encourage moulds to grow and is also more likely to trigger harmful
chemical reactions. For example, many fossils contain microcrystalline iron
pyrite, which absorbs moisture and oxidises to produce, among other things,
sulphuric acid.

Deposits of dust and soot are another potential source of trouble because
they encourage the conversion of sulphur dioxide and related atmospheric
pollutants into sulphurous and sulphuric acids. High temperatures and ultraviolet
radiation can trigger similar chemical reactions. Ultraviolet, and even
long-term exposure to visible light, will fade the colours in organic materials.

Even the cases in which exhibits are displayed can damage their contents.
Wood can give off volatile organic acids that attack calcareous specimens
such as shells and some fossils. The same acids may also damage supports,
eventually leading to the collapse of fragile specimens under their own
weight.

Specimens preserved in alcohols were once commonly stored in soda-lime
glass. Over the years, some constituents of the glass can leach into the
alcohol, leaving the glass itself brittle. Alcohol can evaporate from poorly
sealed containers, such as jars with unlined screw tops, causing their contents
to deteriorate. Traditional glass jars with glass stoppers are more effective
in the long run than mass-produced jars with synthetic seals because the
alcohol eventually causes the seals to deteriorate.

For collections of stuffed animals and dried plant material, infestations
are a continual hazard, and regular cleaning is needed to keep them free
from clothes moths and beetles such as Dermestes, Anthrenus and Attagenus.
Fumigation is the commonest way of keeping displays pest-free, but fumigant
chemicals can produce acidic by-products which damage the specimens.

Many collections face risks from being stored in damp cellars or too
close to a heater. And the old and poorly maintained buildings in which
many collections are housed leave them vulnerable to disasters such as fires
and floods. If a disaster does occur, the effects are often made worse by
the lack of planning to deal with emergency salvage of a collection.