[NHCOLL-L:3801] UNLV Herbarium

[Tim White]

Dear Listserv members,

     Sorry if this is a duplicate, but it's important enough to 
replicate anyway!  We're afraid that another collection could be 
closed to bureaucratic shortsightedness.
     Please read below and help in any way you can.  Besides all the 
great reasons listed below, we would add that UNLV serves as the 
repository for the primary scientific evidence and data on which 
countless theses, dissertations, and other scientific studies and 
publications are based, both  nationally and internationally as well 
as within Nevada, along with  important conservation programs and 
databases, such as NatureServe's network of Natural Heritage Programs 
and Conservation Data Centers.  Without the continued existence and 
accessibility of these data, the value and  repeatability of decades 
of scientific research and progress are  substantially diminished, 
including that by numerous alumni of the University of Nevada system.
  -- Ann Pinzl, former Curator of Natural History/Herbarium Curator, 
Nevda State Museum, Carson City Nevada
  -- Jim Morefield, Nevada Natural Heritage Program, Carson City, Nevada

Ann Pinzl
4020 Hobart Road
Carson City, Nevada 89703
USA
phone: 775 883 0463

******************

13 March 2008
Dear Colleague:

We are writing to inform you of a development of great concern and 
immediacy regarding the future of the Wesley E. Niles Herbarium 
(http://sols.unlv.edu/wesleyniles.htm) at the University of Nevada, 
Las Vegas (http://sols.unlv.edu/wesleyniles.htm). We have chosen to 
send this notice to you because you are aware of the importance and 
value of natural history collections and because you have a concern 
for their continued development and maintenance.

Unfortunately, about a week ago, the Dean of the College of Sciences 
informed our herbarium Collections Manager that her half-time line 
had been transferred from the School of Life Sciences (SoLS) to the 
Department of Geosciences. As with many university natural history 
collections, the Niles Herbarium never has had a large support staff. 
In fact, the herbarium Collections Manager is the only salaried 
position within the SoLS devoted to curatorial activities. The 
Collections Manager has been responsible for the development and 
maintenance of a computerized data base for all specimens; 
accessioning and depositing incoming acquisitions; implementing 
nomenclature revisions; responding to requests for regional plant 
distribution data and plant identification; and facilitating 
herbarium visitations by researchers, federal and state agencies, 
resource managers, students, and the public at large.

It should be obvious, regardless of your experience with the 
maintenance of a viable natural history collection that, should the 
Collections Manager position be eliminated at UNLV, the herbarium 
activities will cease, and its educational and research potentials 
will no longer be realized. While the decision to eliminate this 
herbarium position is purportedly linked to the current budget crises 
that Nevada is experiencing, there is reason to believe that this 
administrative action will lead to an eventual displacement of the 
herbarium from the university.

Dr. Wes Niles (emeritus professor) began compiling the collection 40 
years ago. It now contains 65,000, fully databased specimens of 
vascular plants (about 120 type specimens), and around 5,000 
non-vascular plants (mosses). The collection contains a 
geographically and taxonomically diverse range of exemplar specimens 
representing floras from across North America, making it an extremely 
valuable resource for the education of UNLV students and faculty in 
comparative natural history, ecology, evolution, systematics, and 
conservation of vascular and non-vascular plants.

However, the core uniqueness and irreplaceable value of the herbarium 
lies in its tremendously detailed geographic and taxonomic coverage 
of plant taxa that occur across the diverse landscapes, ecosystems, 
and biomes that comprise the deserts, mountains, and riparian areas 
of the Mojave Desert and surrounding ecoregions. We emphasize that 
such a library for the floras of this unique segment of North 
American biodiversity is not replicated in any other herbarium.

A living and dynamic natural history collection needs to be available 
to and integrated within an array of user-groups, and the Niles 
Herbarium is irreplaceably important to researchers, resource 
managers, and a wide range of other botanists. Loans of specimens are 
made to qualified researchers working on plant taxonomy and 
systematics, resulting in a wide range of peer-reviewed publications, 
such as the Intermountain Flora and the seminal multi-volume Flora of 
North America. Resource managers and botanists in southern Nevada 
have a long history of relying on the Niles Herbarium as a repository 
of critical material derived through biodiversity inventories on 
sensitive lands, as a resource providing the opportunity to learn and 
hone taxonomic diagnostic skills, and as an historical record of 
locality information from a part of the country that is experiencing 
a "wildlands to urban" transformation at a faster pace than anywhere 
else in the country.

In short, the Niles Herbarium provides a unique and irreplaceable 
research, education, and biodiversity library resource to the SoLS, 
the College of Sciences, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the 
Nevada System of Higher Education, the people of the State of Nevada, 
a broad range of state and federal resource management agencies, 
non-governmental organizations, and colleagues in the biological and 
conservation communities across the nation.

We would be grateful to receive any statement that you might wish to 
provide in support of our efforts to retain present curatorial 
expertise and thus secure the continued operation of the herbarium. 
Your response, along with those of others received within the next 
two weeks, will be forwarded to appropriate university 
administrators. Both letters and e-mails are acceptable. They should 
be directed to:

Dr. Brett R. Riddle
Professor of Biology
School of Life Sciences
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
4505 Maryland Parky.
Las Vegas, NV 89154-4004
email: brett.riddle at unlv.edu
voice: 702.895.3133

Our thanks to you for your interest and help in this endeavor.

Brett Riddle, Ph.D.
Wes Niles, PhD.


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