Mindless bureaucratic Outrage of the Year Award

This story is unxxxbelievable. It's well worth reading in total because of the hundreds of years of history behind the outrage. Someones head needs to roll.

February 23 2018
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'Would you burn the Mona Lisa if it was sent?': Our horror bureaucratic bungle
It’s a bungle that has floored botanists around the globe and embarrassed the Australian government. How did 105 priceless and irreplaceable historical plant specimens, sent here by the French, end up being destroyed by biosecurity officers?

Marc Jeanson is young for his role as director of the world's largest and oldest herbarium, the Jardin des Plantes at France's Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, and he doesn't look as you imagine a botanist should.

When Le Monde profiled him a few years back – his job packs that sort of cultural cachet in France – the reporter suggested he might be mistaken for a figure of fashion or advertising. In his mid-30s, he has a pianist's fingers, an elegant presence and a quiet but passionate manner of speaking.
So it was out of character when, on the morning of April 7 last year, Jeanson arrived at work, checked his email and howled and swore with such violence that a librarian working nearby rushed into his office see if he was okay. He was not.

Jeanson had received a message from the director of the Queensland Herbarium in Australia that was abrupt to the point of being blunt. It told him that a package of 105 botanical specimens of Australian plants owned by the Jardin des Plantes – and gathered by an intrepid French botanist more than 200 years earlier – had been destroyed by Australian biosecurity officials.

To this day, Jeanson can't quite believe what happened, and nor can scientists and museum directors from around the world who have followed the story with horror.

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/goo...rror-bureaucratic-bungle-20180213-h0w0w3.html

This event happened last year. This reports offers more detail of the circumstances around the destruction.

Australian biosecurity officials destroy plant samples from 19th-century France
Email mix-up blamed after historically significant plant samples incinerated by quarantine officials

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...estroy-plant-samples-from-19th-century-france

We are a laughing stock these days for more than one reason.

It is a bit of bungling from some incompetent workers. And a lot of people too lazy to check. I have had friends in similar positions with packages that have been ruined because people were to lazy to follow up on details.

But bio security is important in this country and not enough money is spent on it.

moXJO said:

It is a bit of bungling from some incompetent workers. And a lot of people too lazy to check. I have had friends in similar positions with packages that have been ruined because people were to lazy to follow up on details.

But bio security is important in this country and not enough money is spent on it.

Click to expand...

If you read the stories there was a number of conversations between the Museum and Bio security about the package. It was material sent from a French museum to an Australian Museum. Destroying it before the paper work was being sorted out is, frankly, inexcusable.
Did you read the history of the plant specimens ?

Who cares..... probably ~60 yearolds+ and that's about it.

It's a bit rich that people (e.g. The Guardian) who don't in any way respect our history, unless it's about the struggles and promotion of fringe elements e.g. gays, feminist, etc), are moaning about some historical flora and making out it's national tragedy ... crocodile tears.

Tisme said:

Who cares..... probably ~60 yearolds+ and that's about it.

It's a bit rich that people (e.g. The Guardian) who don't in any way respect our history, unless it's about the struggles and promotion of fringe elements e.g. gays, feminist, etc), are moaning about some historical flora and making out it's national tragedy ... crocodile tears.

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Keep digging Tisme. With a bit of luck you'll reach bedrock and settle down for keeps.
The most recent story on this disastrous episode was written in The Good Weekend (the first reference) . Ironically one of the interesting key points was the role of Sir Joseph Banks in protecting the plant samples and ensuring they went to the French Museum.

basilio said:

Keep digging Tisme. With a bit of luck you'll reach bedrock and settle down for keeps.
The most recent story on this disastrous episode was written in The Good Weekend (the first reference) . Ironically one of the interesting key points was the role of Sir Joseph Banks in protecting the plant samples and ensuring they went to the French Museum.

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Not digging, just stating facts. It's just another headline story for people who like to champion causes to latch onto...a bandaid fix until some other more important agenda comes along like, I dunno, special legislation dealing with vilification of people with red hair or something similarly disastrous.

basilio said:

If you read the stories there was a number of conversations between the Museum and Bio security about the package. It was material sent from a French museum to an Australian Museum. Destroying it before the paper work was being sorted out is, frankly, inexcusable.
Did you read the history of the plant specimens ?

Click to expand...

Yes, some dumbfcuk was too lazy to dig further. Internal blunder.

Welcome to the public service of Australia, Frenchy sanples. Aussies are bloody shocking.

Tisme said:

Not digging, just stating facts. It's just another headline story for people who like to champion causes to latch onto...a bandaid fix until some other more important agenda comes along like, I dunno, special legislation dealing with vilification of people with red hair or something similarly disastrous.

Click to expand...

Oh well prattle on Tizze. You and facts have never gotten along.

It doesn't enhance our reputation as a reliable research partner.

Story is almost a year old. The supposedly rare plants were pressed daisies from the 1850s.

The dept held the stuff for 46 days waiting for documentation that never happened.... that's how important it was to the Brisbane herbarium .. they were so enthusiastic they didn't do anything.

The story about a second shipment fro New Zealand was news to the dept and probably the usual bulltwang that people make to fill out a story.

Tisme said:

Story is almost a year old. The supposedly rare plants were pressed daisies from the 1850s.
.

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Really Tisme ? Confident about this "fact" ? Certain about your sources ? Convinced about your rightness?

basilio said:

Really Tisme ? Confident about this "fact" ? Certain about your sources ? Convinced about your rightness?

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Yep even viewed the transcript from the dept. Maybe you should try doing research sometime too.

Kinda makes your topic description hysterical doesn't it.

Tisme = batting 500, Bas = zip, nada, zero, zilch, nil, .....

Cue another personal insult reply.

Really Tisme ? Please publish your transcript from the Department.

basilio said:

Really Tisme ? Please publish your transcript from the Department.

Click to expand...

Nope, but you can dig yourself:

Federal Department of Agriculture and Water Resources

You will see they didn't receive any paperwork until early March 2017 which didn't meet import requirements. They waited and waited for new applications, but none came...thus the May 8 , 2017 schlock reports

Good luck.

Not worth waiting for your explanation Tisme. Trying to somehow minimise or ridicule the loss of irreplaceable botantical specimens to score points on this board just about sums you up.

Anyone can research this topic on the net and recognise that the destruction of these specimens was a very serious failure of process.

In fact just reading the original article I had posted would have demonstrated the importance to botany of these specimens.

Botanists fear research slowdown after priceless specimens destroyed at Australian border

By Erik StokstadMay. 11, 2017 , 12:30 PM

This week’s news that Australian customs officers incinerated irreplaceable plant specimens has shocked botanists around the world, and left many concerned about possible impacts on international research exchanges. Some have put a freeze on sending samples to Australia until they are assured that their packages won’t meet a similar fate, and others are discussing broader ways of assuring safe passage of priceless specimens.

"This story is likely to have a major chilling effect on the loan system between herbaria across national boundaries," says Austin Mast, president of the Society of Herbarium Curators and director of the herbarium at Florida State University in Tallahassee. "Without the free sharing of specimens, the pace of plant diversity research slows."

...
Herbaria are guardians of plant biodiversity data. Around the world, about 3000 institutions keep a total of 350 million plants specimens that have been pressed, dried, and stored in cabinets. Some are hundreds of years old; others are rare examples of extinct species. Particularly valuable are so-called type specimens, used to describe species for the first time. Botanists consult these when they are identifying new species or revising taxonomy. Many herbaria have digitized images of their specimens, allowing initial research to be conducted remotely. But some details must be examined first-hand. To do that, biologists often request specimens through a kind of interlibrary loan. "The system works well when the risk of damage or destruction of loaned specimens is perceived to be very low," Mast says.

When things go awry
But sometimes things go awry. Earlier this week, many botanists learned about the destruction of six type specimens of daisies—some collected during a French expedition to Australia from 1791 to 1793—which the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Paris had mailed along with 99 other specimens to the Queensland Herbarium in Brisbane, Australia.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017...iceless-specimens-destroyed-australian-border

The issues at the heart of this destruction are the paperwork requirements of our quarantine department and follow ups with universities if/when things go wrong. The decision to just destroy the parcel before misunderstandings were sorted out is the final killer.


When things go awry
But sometimes things go awry. Earlier this week, many botanists learned about the destruction of six type specimens of daisies—some collected during a French expedition to Australia from 1791 to 1793—which the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Paris had mailed along with 99 other specimens to the Queensland Herbarium in Brisbane, Australia.

After the package arrived in Brisbane in early January, the specimens were held up at customs because the paperwork was incomplete. Biosecurity officers asked the Queensland Herbarium for a list of the specimens and how they were preserved, but the herbarium sent its responses to the wrong email address, delaying the response by many weeks. In March, the officers requested clarification, but then incinerated the samples. "It's like taking a painting from the Louvre and burning it," says James Solomon, herbarium curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.

According to Australia’s Department of Agriculture and Water Resources, which enforces biosecurity rules, part of the problem was that the samples had a declared value of $2—and its agents routinely destroy low-value items that have been kept longer than 30 days. Michel Guiraud, director of collections at NMNH, says his museum's policy is to put minimal values on shipments. "If it is irreplaceable, there is no way to put an insurance value on it," he says.

Guiraud says the package was sent with the usual documentation and he's trying to find out what went wrong. Concerned about the possibility of other scientific samples being destroyed, the museum is considering stopping loans from all of its collections to Australia.

Australia’s agriculture department admitted in a statement that it erred in prematurely destroying the specimens, but didn't take sole responsibility for the snafu. "This is a deeply regrettable occurrence, but it does highlight the importance of the shared responsibility of Australia’s biosecurity system, and the need for adherence to import conditions." The department has reviewed its procedures for handling delayed items and is considering how package labels could highlight the “intrinsic value” of scientific specimens. On Monday, officials met with representatives from a consortium of Australasian herbaria to help them understand and comply with importation rules. "At this stage it appears we are resolving the matter very positively," says botanist Michelle Waycott of the University of Adelaide in Australia and the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria.

A second incident came to light after botanists at the Allan Herbarium in Lincoln, New Zealand, heard last month about the destruction of the French specimens. They inquired about six lichen samples, including a type specimen of Buellia macularis, that they had shipped to the Australian National Herbarium in Canberra last year. It turned out the specimens had been destroyed in October 2016 by biosecurity officers in Sydney, Australia. The department is investigating what happened in this case.

New Zealand herbaria have suspended loans to Australia while they wait for written guarantees that their specimens will be safe. “We are disappointed we have lost an important part of our collection but we’re looking forward to further international collaboration,” said Ilse Breitwieser, director of the Allan Herbarium, in a statement this week.

Looking for solutions
Curators elsewhere are reviewing how they ship samples internationally. "We will rethink our policy of lending specimens to countries that would pose a risk for loss of collections," says Christine Niezgoda, collections manager of flowering plants at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, who, like others, was surprised to learn that specimens would be destroyed rather than returned. The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections, which is following the situation in Australia, hopes to increase communication among curators about shipping regulations and border inspection procedures.

A long-standing frustration for many is that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), like its counterpart in Australia, does not have a separate category for low-risk scientific specimens. "The way that the U.S. and Australian governments are treating these shipments is basically going to bring taxonomic work to a halt," says Ellen Dean, curator of the Center for Plant Diversity at the University of California, Davis. "We are thinking of no longer loaning our specimens to other countries, because we are uncertain that APHIS will allow our own specimens back into this country."

Whatever the destination, veterans emphasize that every detail matters, even the most obvious. "Nothing derails a shipment faster than a wrong address," says Thiers, who maintains a public database of herbaria addresses and contact information. "Sometimes they don't get returned for years, and unless you take extraordinary measures, you won't get them back." (With the volume of specimens that get mailed from the New York Botanic Garden—up to 30,000 a year—Thiers can't afford tracked shipments and uses cheaper library rate shipping.)

Even the most diligent curators confess to late-night worries. "Any time you let something go out the door, there's a risk," says Solomon, who is continuing to send specimens to Australia. "The benefit from making the material available far outweighs the risk." Says Niezgoda: "Collections are meant to be used to promote scientific inquiry and this should not change."

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017...iceless-specimens-destroyed-australian-border