Jessica Gurevitch asked me to forward this call to action to Ecolog readers. The letter was originally addressed to members of the Union of Concerned Scientists but is perhaps of more interest to readers of Ecolog. I copy it in its entirety below.
******************************************** To Whom It May Concern: As a member of UCS, I would like to bring to the attention of the Union of Concerned Scientists a matter of great importance to the Life Sciences community, the destruction of the 115-year old Science Department at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York City. The story was outlined in today's New York Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/botanic-garden-prunes-science-staff-article-1.1438606 ). In the last two decades, the Science Department has received millions in dollars in grants from governmental and private agencies, as well as donations from ordinary citizens, in support of scientifc research directed to documenting the flora of the New York City Metropolitan Area (NYMF). The Garden has now violated its own Mission Statement and also violated the basis upon which it receives funding from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in that it no longer provides the results of that scientific research to the public. Below, I reproduce a message I just received from a scientist who was formerly employed at the Garden: "RE BBG, things have gone from bad to worse. Today they stripped all the research pages off of the main website. There is no longer a "research" tab on BBG's main page, which means the NYMF and Herbarium pages are gone (although you can still find them if you do a search on the BBG page or using Google). That is pretty sad, Many of us have been criticizing the Garden for its actions and (I believe rightfully) demanding that they must stop billing themselves as a research institution. However, that does not give them license to expunge the results from the previous 100 years when the Garden did do research. Some of the grants they received explicitly said that the information must be made publically available. I spoke to Steve Glenn today and now with the NYMF site gone he feels like he wasted the last twenty years of his life. Today I also reached out to Sir Ghillean Prance who is a disinguished advisor to BBG's Board of Trustees (http://www.bbg.org/about/trustee). He is the former director of Kew Gardens, and only person I am aware of from the board and its advisors, who has a distinguished and extensive background in plant taxonomy and herbarium curation.One would like to think that the board, the president and vice presidents would have sought his advice before taking their action to shutter science and the herbarium. If he was not in the loop on this decision, then this is just more evidence of how sad things are at BBG these days. I will let you know if I get a reply." This matter is compounded by the egregious manner in which three scientists and one educator were summarily fired, while on vacation and by phone or email! The Union of Concerned Scientists would greatly benefit the community of life scientists by investigating this matter and providing assistance to the affected scientists and educator. I will be be glad to provide contacts and further materials to the investigation. With thanks in advance for your help, Sincerely, Andrew M. Greller, Ph.D. Professor of Biology, Emeritus Queens College, CUNY -- Stephen Baines Assoc. Professor, Ecology and Evolution Stony Brook University, LSB 110/112 Stony Brook, NY 11794-5245 office:(631)632-1092, lab:(631)632-6172, fax: (631)632-7626 http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/ee/baineslab/
