Bishop Museum and Hawaii Biological Survey Update

[Neal Evenhuis]

The latest Records of the Hawaii Biological Survey (for 1999) was
published last month.

Table of contents for the two volumes can be found at:
http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/pdf/OP63.pdf
http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/pdf/OP64.pdf


Thank you to all the contributors that have helped make it successful
over the last 6 years. This is a call for papers for the Records of
the Hawaii Biological Survey for 2000. The deadline for submission of
papers is 15 December 2000. Expected publication will be the middle
of the year 2001.

For authors's guidelines, please see:
http://hbs/bishopmuseum.org/guidelines.pdf


Bishop Museum Update:

We continue to get questions about the status of funding to Bishop
Museum and access to collections.  Although the US economy in general
has been doing very well, in Hawaii we've had slow or stagnant
economic growth for much of the past decade. This decreased tax
revenues and that in turn forced cutbacks in state funding.  Although
direct funding for the State of Hawaii has never exceeded 15% of
Bishop Museum's budget, the abrupt loss of about $2 million in state
funding several years ago forced us to reduce staffing and to take
other measures to reduce costs and increase revenues.

These last few years, we strengthened our fund raising efforts.  That
action stabilized the situation and provided a strong foundation for
growth.  During this past year Hawaii's economy has regained momentum
and our revenues, including the state subsidy and grants, trusts and
bequests, are up sharply over last year and the year before. In
particular, our state appropriation doubled over last year's.  This
increase in support from various sources has allowed us to refill
positions lost in the cutbacks of previous years and to plot a course
for strong future growth.  In particular we are strengthening the
Hawaii Biological Survey (HBS) and developing a Pacific Biological
Survey based on the HBS model.

Our collections are open and accessible.  We are actively processing
loans and hosting visiting researchers.  At the moment we have more
than a million specimens out on loan.  During the past three years,
despite the turbulent financial times, Bishop Museum researchers and
resident affiliates produced more than 360 publications, including 11
books -- 121 of these in the last year alone.

Many of you wrote in support of the Bishop Museum during the past
several years and we once again thank you for that support.  It
really made a difference.  We remain very optimistic about the future.

Aloha,

Allen Allison
Vice President, Science

Neal Evenhuis
Chairman, Natural Sciences Department