The big picture

Experts such as Bruce Marshall are among a small and ageing group with expertise in the crucial but unsexy field of taxonomy – identifying, describing and naming New Zealand’s flora and fauna, which underpins everything from identifying biosecurity pests to understanding relationships between different organisms.

A Royal Society review in 2015 found taxonomists were themselves an endangered species, and that expertise took 10 to 15 years to build up.

‘‘The reduction in national taxonomic expertise means that the quality of science and the delivery of timely information and services is placed at risk.’’

The review also found New Zealand’s 29 collections of national significance – held in museums, crown research institutes and universities nationwide – were underfunded and needed better national co-ordination. Only about half New Zealand’s organisms have been identified and, of the 12 million specimens in the national collections, only one-fifth had been entered into electronic databases.

Auckland War Memorial Museum’s head of natural sciences, Tom Trnski, says most museums speak the rhetoric of the value of their collections, but don’t walk the talk. His museum has used depreciation funding to employ 15 cataloguers on a four-year project to reduce its digitisation backlog. In natural sciences, that will reduce the backlog from 40 to 30 per cent.

However, national collections are vulnerable to the changing priorities of the individual institutions holding them, Trnski says.

‘‘We all suffer the same problems, in that resources and priorities shift regularly. And then it’s very hard to maintain momentum to build the benefits of these millions of objects in collections across New Zealand.’’

Trnski, who co-wrote the Royal Society report, calls for a funded national body to co-ordinate national collections, as has been set up in Australia.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is reviewing all national collections and planned to report back to the minister by October last year. A spokesman says consultation took longer than expected and any decisions will now be implemented later this year.

Retired Landcare Research scientist David Penman has spent decades advocating for better co-ordination of our national treasures, and chaired the global mega-database of all known creatures. The erosion of New Zealand’s taxonomic expertise seems to be death by 1000 cuts, he says.

While some investment in 2016 staved off the urgent issue of collections facing shutdown, there is little evidence of any strategic view of how all the pieces fit together. No-one is interested in long-term investment, until there’s some emergency, he says.

‘‘When we did budget analyses, you could project out that in 5 to 10 years’ time, we will have no research going on. We’ll be merely warehousing our historical collections, with very little new stuff going on. The trouble is, something like PSA comes along, or kauri dieback

. . . Ooh, urgency, who can identify it? Well, actually, the last people were laid off three years ago.’’