Museums with natural history collections collect and preserve examples of biodiversity both locally and globally. The Whanganui Regional Museum collection includes preserved animals from around the world. Some of these, such as the snow leopard, or New Zealand natives such as the kakapo, are now critically endangered. Others, like the Tasmanian tiger, or the New Zealand huia, are extinct. Visiting school groups often ask how these extinct or endangered animals came to be in the museum collection. In the past it was socially acceptable to collect every kind of fauna for preservation in museums. Killing any kind of animal now elicits a range of negative responses including shock and disgust. Many New Zealand museums keep live collections of small animals such as geckos, native freshwater species, spiders and other invertebrates. Museums also continue to collect, kill and preserve invertebrates for scientific research. Is this still okay?
Recently the Whanganui Regional Museum took part in a week of coastal education for schools provided by the Department of Conservation and other organisations at Castlecliff Beach to celebrate Seaweek. While investigating what lives along the shore, a female katipo spider was found by one of the adults. Children and adults alike were excited about the katipo and most had never seen one before.
After the spider was admired and photographed, I thought about keeping her temporarily to show the rest of the groups taking part in Seaweek. A live katipo would really help to engage children in learning about conservation of the coastal environment and it is not too difficult to provide a spider with everything it needs to stay alive for a week. Should I risk the possibility of an endangered animal dying in captivity? As katipo are an "absolutely protected" species, that could mean a year in prison or a $100,000 fine! I decided to put her back, in a place where she was unlikely to be disturbed by feet or vehicle wheels. A quick check the next day found her very much alive, with a huge meal of Brullea antarctica, a large coastal ground beetle, at her feet.
What if I had kept the spider and she died? The museum would end up with new example of an endangered species in the collection, and I would have the death of something small, fragile, beautiful and endangered on my conscience.
Museum collections form an important record of the biodiversity of each region. We do need to preserve a record of what lives in our area but we don't always need to capture and kill things to do that. Photography is a great tool for recording everything around us, and with an increasing number of people owning digital cameras, it is relatively easy to record what you have found and where you have found it. I can envisage a future where museum natural history collections will be mostly a database of good quality images of live animals photographed in their natural habitats, with associated information such as a GPS location and any relevant observations made by the "collector".
