Natural History Museum’s wildlife garden: fury at ‘urban redesign’ plan

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/oct/03/natural-history-museum-bulldoze-wildlife-garden

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A long-simmering row over plans to overhaul a corner of one of Britain’s best loved museums has burst into the open, with its director publicly defending the move.

Sir Michael Dixon, head of the Natural History Museum in London, has come under fire over plans to transform a wildlife garden in the museum’s grounds. He says the change will allow for the creation of a new entrance to the museum, necessary because visitor numbers have soared since free admission was introduced in 2001.

Established in 1995, the one-acre site, with ponds, heathland, meadows, woods and grazing sheep, has been the site of several important scientific discoveries.

The plan would see the building of a large concrete pond and wide path to channel visitors through the garden, which is home to almost 3,000 species of flora and fauna. Critics say the museum is going to “bulldoze away the miniature down and meadow” and introduce concrete terracing with fruit trees and a herb garden.

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Writing last week as a guest on the blog of naturalist Mark Avery, wildlife expert Peter Marren said the new-look garden will be “little more than a designed urban thoroughfare built largely of concrete”.

The row broke out months ago, but is now starting to draw wider attention. Almost 3,000 people, including volunteers and scientists at the museum, have signed a petition organised by the Prospect union, which represents staff at the institution, protesting against the proposals.

One scientist told the union, which is broadly supportive of moves to overhaul other parts of the museum, that the plan “will no doubt be damaging to the museum’s reputation and incredibly disappointing to its millions of fans”.

Another said it “borders on insanity” to spend millions revamping “a magical place where visitors and staff alike can enjoy quiet and refreshing moments and an unexpected array of wildlife right in the centre of the city”.

A poll, shared with the Observer, of Prospect members working at the museum, suggests nine out of 10 oppose the proposals. BBC wildlife presenter Chris Packham is one of the critics of the plans and is understood to have written to Dixon to voice his concerns.

A three-day public consultation closed last week, and the plans are to go before the relevant authorities next month. In a sign that the museum is keen to take the sting out of the mounting opposition, Dixon has offered a defence of the proposals, also posted on Avery’s blog.

“The entire grounds project will increase biodiversity across the whole site of the museum, and recognises the need to accommodate enormous growth in attendance since free admission was reintroduced,” he argues. On a busy day there will be 25,000 people entering the museum, and its bosses believe making better use of the least visited part, the garden, will improve visitors’ experience.

“One of the biggest complaints we have from visitors is queueing time – it can be an hour-and-a-half to get in,” said Dr Sandra Knapp, a plant taxonomist at the museum. “Then when you get in, you queue again to see the dinosaurs. On a really bad day, you could be queuing for two-and-a-half hours. So part of this is about reducing queuing times.

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As a public institution whose mission is to inspire people into the natural world, we have failed if those people are turned away.” She added that the new-look garden will help people understand the role cities play in promoting biodiversity: “If we as individuals feel that biodiversity is in the Amazon, or the countryside, or somewhere that we don’t live, we are less apt to save it.”

But Dave Goulson, professor of biology at the University of Sussex and author of two bestselling nature books, A Sting in the Tale and A Buzz in the Meadow, urged the museum to think again.

“Britain’s wildlife is in decline, and places where adults and children can go to experience nature hands on are increasingly rare in our cities,” he said.

“Pinned insects and stuffed animals are all very well, but the wildlife garden at the Natural History Museum also gives visitors the chance to see real, living animals and plants – newts, orchids, damselflies. It sets a terrible example for the museum to be destroying one such place in the heart of London.”