Academy of Natural Sciences financial problems

[MKIRKALDY@aol.com]

"Dinosaur museum is itself threatened"
"The Academy of Natural Sciences  has been harmed by cuts in staffing and 
years of financial troubles."
By  Patricia Horn
Inquirer Staff Writer
Posted on Sun, Dec. 04,  2005
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/living/health/13324126.htm

To  generations of parents and children, the Academy of Natural Sciences is  
Philadelphia's dinosaur museum.
But to scientists who study climate change,  the extinction of species, and 
other critical ecological matters, the academy is  the home of one of the 
world's most valuable collections of biological  specimens, critical to 
understanding life on Earth.
"The academy is not just  another museum," said Piotr Naskrecki, a Harvard 
University-based director of  Conservation International. "It is a priceless 
library of biodiversity."
And  it is all at risk.
The academy, at 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, is  struggling financially, 
and has been for more than a decade. It ran deficits  through much of the 
1980s, and from 1993 through last year, the academy ran  annual deficits 
averaging 
about $700,000 a year.
The shortfalls have forced  the academy over the last 15 years to shed many 
of the people who care for its  25 million specimens of fish, moss, coral, 
diatoms, dinosaur bones, birds,  mammals, mollusks and plants.
The cuts continued last year, as it reduced its  already shrunken scientific 
staff by a third, trimmed other staff, and  restructured.
All that has left scientists in and out of the academy worried  about the 
welfare of the collection and the future of the institution.
_____
 
<SNIP> of long, interesting article.
 
Mary