[NHCOLL-L:1894] Re: Threatened Collections

[Doug Yanega]

Given Gerald Noonan's message, this latest from Roberta Faul-Zeitler, 
and other signs of the coming Apocalypse, one rather immediate and 
urgent question comes to mind:

If these threats are here and now, then it's almost certainly too 
late for us to be discussing what long-term plans we might make for 
reshaping public and political perception of the role of museums and 
taxonomists. Getting more public support five to ten years from now 
isn't going to help if half the museums in the country are dismantled 
in the next two years. It's like we're all tied to the railroad 
tracks in a big line while a train is heading for us (the first in 
line have already been hit, in fact), and if our best solution is 
calling the head of the railway and asking him to re-route the train 
before it runs *all* of us over, then I think we're in big trouble; 
there's too much inertia and bureaucracy in the way. I can think of a 
few alternatives, but they're very risky, require way more 
cooperation than our community is probably capable of, and involve 
way more public exposure than we're likely to be comfortable with, so 
I don't think they're realistic. Doesn't anyone one else have any 
ideas as to what we might do *now* to improve our odds - essentially, 
a way to cut whatever it is that ties us to the tracks?

Peace,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
		http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82