February 27, 2002
All Species Foundation Signs MOU With The Hawaii Biological Survey
In February, All Species Foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding with
the Hawaii Biological Survey with a mutual goal of "completing the describing and
formal naming of all multi-cellular organisms in the Hawaiian Islands within five years".
This kind of strategic partnership is one way ALL can foster its 25-year goal of providing
knowledge of all species for all people. ALL sees this partnership as an early model of what
needs to happen, and should happen all over the world.
(Note: "All Species Hawaii" fits nicely into one of the three categories of ATBIs presently being
discussed by the All Species Science Board. These are 1) All Species Research & Development ATBI, 2)
All Species Rapid ATBI for immediate conservation purposes, and, 3) All Species Foundation partnership
with existing ATBIs and start-ups.)
Background on the Hawaii Biological Survey
http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/hbs3.html
Since its foundation in 1889, the Bishop Museum has been in the forefront of enumerating Hawaii's biota.
One hundred years later, the Hawaii State legislature formally mandated the Hawaii Biological Survey as
a program of the Bishop Museum and gave it the task of collecting, inventorying, data basing, and making
available to the Public, the results of surveying Hawaii's fauna and flora. The natural sciences collections of
the Bishop Museum serve as the State repository for biological specimens. They comprise over 4 million specimens
of Hawaiian plant and animal species.