[Taxacom] long-term ecological monitoring

[Frederick W Schueler]

Taxacombers,

We're getting ready, and seeking support, for a year-long field trip 
revisiting places all across Canada where we collected in the 1970s and 
1980s - http://pinicola.ca/thirty/ - to describe how things have either 
changed or stayed the same. We're doing this with substantial support 
from the Canadian Museum of Nature, but it's not going to be a museum 
expedition, and the museum doesn't find itself ready to commit itself as 
a sponsoring institution for long-term monitoring in Canada.

There's apparently no organization whose central mandate is long-term 
ecological/natural history monitoring and understanding ecological and 
evolutionary change in Canada. There are museums and numerous long-term 
and middle-term monitoring projects, each doing their own thing, while 
conservation groups and some government agencies try to ensure that 
sites and ecosystems stay the same.  But there seems to be no organized 
group dedicated to seeing that long term monitoring, which would seem to 
be a fundamental component of sustainable human habitation of the Earth. 
I've rumbled, quietly, about this aspects of this before in 
http://pinicola.ca/h2001a.htm and other pieces at 
http://pinicola.ca/publicat.htm

As the decades go by, and we see so many projects fade as their 
sponsoring institutions change priorities, and see so many 
data-management disasters in projects where long-term monitoring isn't 
an institutional priority, we're increasingly sure that worthwhile aims 
like long term monitoring need independent dedicated institutions 
specifically focused on them.

Several years ago we set up http://pinicola.ca/fragilin.htm to describe 
our plans to institutionalize our work as a potential non-profit. We're 
thinking this may be the time to form such an organization, but with a 
more national scope. This would give us a platform during the "30 Years 
Later Expedition" for promoting long-term monitoring.

We wonder if there are existing similar institutions similar to this, 
and what advice we could be given about such an initiative?

Would anyone be interested in working with us on such a project?

fred
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            Bishops Mills Natural History Centre
          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
       RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
    on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
      (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca
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