Plenary Day 1

TOWARDS A NATIONAL PROGRAM FOR NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS DEVELOPMENT IN THE PHILIPPINES

Amado R. Alvarez

Museum Administrator, Yuchengco Museum and Head, National Committee on Museums, Subcommission for Cultural Heritage, National Commission for Culture and the Arts

This conference is pivotal to the acknowledgement that not much attention and effort have been made to natural history museums in the Philippines, as the thrust principally is on cultural heritage and history museums. But there is an emerging consensus that we should pay additional attention to the creation and management of natural history museums. Natural history collections are important in transforming science education from passive learning into active exploration of the important relationships among environmental conditions, biodiversity and human being. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity, emerging pathogens, threats to food security, environmentally induced health issues are important concerns of mankind that can be best explained through museum exhibits and education programs. As such, natural history collections are extremely important in preserving and understanding past and present biodiversity; they give us an insight into the structure of past biological communities and how they have changed over time.

The primary challenge is looking at better ways to collaborate, through exchange of specimens, data and scientific papers. The exchange mechanism may initially be best achieved virtually amongst local and regional museums as well.

Laws and Regulations Affecting Collection for Natural History Repositories

Theresa Mundita S. Lim

Director, Department of Environment and Natural Resources - Biodiversity Management Bureau

Natural history museums assume the crucial role as repositories of biological diversity and bastion of information pertaining to the Earth’s organisms, both living and extinct. Natural history collections effectively present a vivid reconstruction of biological and geological phenomena which shed light on the emerging natural patterns and processes in the planet. In the Philippines, the Department Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the Department of Agriculture (DA), and the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD) are the three principal agencies which have management jurisdiction over the country’s wildlife resources.

A number of laws and regulations are likewise in place to ensure the responsible collection and utilization of wildlife resources, primary among which is Republic Act No. 9147 or the “Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act of 2001” Under this law, procedures and requirements involving collection and utilization of biological resources for various purposes such as bioprospecting, non-commercial scientific research, wildlife breeding and trade, including local transport and export, are prescribed.

Changing Roles and Modern Techniques in Herbarium Management

Dr. George Argent

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, United Kingdom

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) has between 2 and 3 million herbarium specimens dating back to 1697 with some classic collections of Charles Darwin. Standard herbarium specimens, (dried pressed plants attached to paper or board), have proved remarkably resilient when stored under good conditions and have successfully supported the Linnaean binomial system of nomenclature which underpins the whole of plant science. Modernisation of herbarium techniques is essential in the modern world where the destruction of biodiversity is far exceeding the rate of classical descriptive taxonomy. Often simple steps improve the viability of herbarium material such as using acid free paper and archival pens. Some of the more robust techniques of preservation have had to be replaced with alternatives due to ‘health and safety’ legislation. Thus the very effective use of mercuric chloride, para dichlorobenzine and bromine fumigation in combating insect pests have had to be replaced with rigorous rotations of freezing specimens, using sealed cabinets and/or sealed polythene bags.

Recent molecular techniques have revolutionised the way we arrange the specimens in the herbarium based on the underlying genetic affinities rather than just morphological evidence, the APG (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group) system. These molecular or DNA studies questing evolutionary histories have however also increased demands for destructive sampling which can threaten the future integrity of type material. Modern methods of scanning, bar-coding and giving ‘universal stable identifiers’ to herbarium specimens are attempts to make information available rapidly to a wider audience of users on a permanent basis while reducing the erosion of specimens and the time and expense of shipping material around the world for serious study. In this age of computers the bar codes and stable identifiers link diverse information such as living or pickled specimens as well as images and references. The advance of techniques for successfully sampling DNA material from old dry specimens have given greatly added value to our classic collections which have become increasingly important to modern studies.

The role of the herbarium and botanic garden has substantially changed in recent years to increase the emphasis on education at all levels from primary school children to PhD students and the general public. It is important that we are not perceived as an ‘ivory tower’ but a vital cog in maintaining a healthy society and world.

ASEAN Efforts in Building Biodiversity Information and Collections

Dr. Filiberto A. Pollisco, Jr.

Programme Specialist for Conservation Policy & Research, ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity

The presentation starts by describing the reasons behind the Global Taxonomy Initiative of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. It would then segue to the action areas of the GTI Program of Work to link the ASEAN region’s activities to that in the global level. At the regional level (ASEAN), discussion would focus on the efforts of the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity in addressing the taxonomic impediment as identified by the UN CBD. Of particular interest would be the taxonomic capacity building activities funded by the Japan-ASEAN Integration Fund (JAIF). To date since 2010, there are already more than 500 technical officers from the 10 ASEAN Member States that were trained in taxonomy, ranging from hard corals to terrestrial plants to economically important insects and macro-fungi.

The second part of the presentation would be a discussion on the ACB’s efforts in storing and updating information in databases in the Clearing House Mechanism at the regional level. To be discussed would be the Species Database and the Protected Area Database as repositories of taxonomic information. Many of the information found in the databases have been harvested from the world databases such as WDPA, FishBase, IUCN, and other sources. Furthermore, the CHM databases are formatted after the global and regional databases such as the Asia-Pacific Biodiversity Observation Network (AP-BON), the Geographic Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO-BON), The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the East and Southeast Asia Biodiversity Information Initiative (ESABII).

Lastly, the summary results of the GTI Regional Action Planning for 2017 – 2025, which would be held on 19-21 September 2017 in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, will be presented. The GTI Regional Action Plan would chart the course of taxonomy for the next 7 years and hopefully would be one of the basis for the “Next Steps” of the CLADES Convention.