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Last year, Australian bureaucrats facilitated the destruction of a priceless, irreplaceable, scientific collection of plant materials on loan to their country's scientists from France. Apparently the actual destruction was carried out by an "external contractor", but that in no way absolves the bureaucracy.
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.
The specimens were both priceless and irreplaceable. How could anyone, let alone government officials, incinerate such artefacts? It was simply beyond Jeanson's comprehension. It remains so, even after post-mortems and investigations conducted in both countries, by scientists and bureaucrats, after diplomats stepped in and compensation negotiations were undertaken.
The specimens destroyed were part of the catalog of the world's plants and were a part of a base for pharmacy, agriculture, and any kind of science based on plants.
Source : 'Would you burn the Mona Lisa if it was sent?': Our horror bureaucratic bungle
(Score: 5, Informative) by dtremenak on Monday February 26 2018, @06:43PM
Actually...yeah, basically. If you loan a few books or tools to a friend, and they don't come back, you stop loaning them things, right? Especially when it happens more than once (a rare lichen collection from a New Zealand museum was also incinerated by Australia last year).
And let's see what happened from TFA:
"Jeanson says ... the museum will maintain its suspension of loans to Australia. The ban includes not only botanical specimens, but those from across the museum's vast holdings in areas such as mineralogy, geology, palaeontology and comparative anatomy."
"Barbara Thiers, director of New York's Steere Herbarium, the world's second largest, [also] immediately suspended loans to Australia."
"The Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria agreed that the institutions they represent would stop even making requests until they could ensure the safety of specimens"