Natural History Museum Annual Report 2001

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM ANNUAL REPORT 2001
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a diverse nature · our year · moving forward: the Director's view · our world · the frontiers of knowledge · our reaseach · on view · communicating our message · the business · supporting us · financial review · looking ahead · contacts · keeping in touch

A DIVERSE NATURE

Through its collections and scientific expertise, The Natural History Museum is helping to conserve the extraordinary richness and diversity of the natural world.

The collections, assembled over three centuries and numbering more than 70 million items, are fundamental to the naming and classifying of species. The Museum is one of the world leaders in this vital work. Although 1.7 million of the world’s living species have so far been described, there may be another 15 million waiting to be discovered.

And for some of these species, time is fast running out. This is a period of mass extinction, the result of the destruction of habitats, climate change and other human interventions. In order to understand and conserve the Earth’s complex biodiversity, it must first be described – which is why the Museum’s scientific work is more urgent than ever before.

The Museum is itself a complex and diverse organism. The collections and the science they support are only one aspect of our work. We also strive to engage the public through our extensive programme of exhibitions, performances, education, lectures, publications and online activities. We want as many people as possible, whatever their cultural or social background, to share our passion for the natural world and to participate as active citizens in its conservation.

You can support the Museum’s work by becoming a Member, making a donation or joining our corporate sponsorship programme. Please see 'supporting us' for further details.

OUR YEAR

Some highlights from the Museum’s year – April 2000 to March 2001

January · A section dedicated to the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum at Tring is launched on our website at www.nhm.ac.uk/museum/tring

January · Dr Monica Grady is interviewed by the media on the lunar eclipse, and the museum launches an eclipse website

February · A new robotic model of Tyrannosaurus rex arrives at the Museum to wide media and public interest

February · London Fashion Week is held at the Museum

April · Lord and Lady Wolfson open the new Wolfson Wellcome Biomedical Laboratories

April · At the ‘topping-out’ of the Phase One Darwin Centre building, Museum research botanist Sarah Darwin lays flints from the grounds of Down House, once the home of her great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin

April · Scientists and museum professionals debate the role of natural science collections at Nature’s Treasurehouses?, a conference held at the Museum

April · Investigate, our innovative new centre for the exploration of natural science, receives a warm welcome from teachers and the general public

July · Our major summer exhibition Rhythms of Life opens · Works by young artists feature in our arts-science exhibition It’s in Your Head · Museum palaeontologist Professor Chris Stringer features in a Channel 4 documentary about human remains found at Stonehenge

July · Members attend a behind-the-scenes tour of the Entomology Department. Generous donations from Members help to secure the future of the precious Miles Moss collection of South American butterflies

September · The Museum is a high profile contributor to the British Association’s Creating Sparks festival held in South Kensington · Museum mineralogist Dr Sara Russell gives a talk on meteorites during the festival

September · The Apollo XI moonwalker Buzz Aldrin is guest of honour at a fundraising event for the Darwin Centre

October · Our publishing division launches three new titles in the Life Series: Snakes, Deep Ocean and Lichens

October · Manoj Shah wins the BG Wildlife Photographer of the Year title

November · Professor John Maynard Smith’s Annual Science Lecture in the Museum’s Central Hall is a sell-out

November · The Museum holds its first ever Public Open Meeting

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a diverse nature · our year · moving forward: the Director's view · our world · the frontiers of knowledge · our reaseach · on view · communicating our message · the business · supporting us · financial review · looking ahead · contacts · keeping in touch

MOVING FORWARD: THE DIRECTOR'S VIEW

This was a landmark year for the Museum, during which we completed the construction of Phase One of the Darwin Centre.

The Darwin Centre is the key to delivering our mission – to maintain and develop our collections and to use them to promote the discovery, understanding, responsible use and enjoyment of the natural world. The Darwin Centre will reveal the astonishing range and diversity of the Museum’s collections, and the cutting-edge scientific research that they support.

As I write, teams of curatorial staff are transferring the massive zoological collection from the Spirit Building to the Darwin Centre, and our exhibitions, education and visitor services teams are planning the arrangements for public access. When Phase One opens in September 2002, our specimens will be accessible as never before. Organized tours will take visitors amongst the collections; live video link-ups and presentations by scientists will demonstrate how the collections are utilized; and our website will enable people around the world to access information about the collections and the specimens they contain.

Our plans for Phase Two are rapidly taking shape. This second building, located near Phase One on the west side of the Museum, will safeguard the future of the Museum’s 28 million insects and 6 million plant specimens. A competition to select an architect is underway, and the Museum is currently raising the substantial funds needed for this ambitious and important project. We were delighted by the Heritage Lottery Fund’s decision, announced in August 2001, to pledge £14.9 million with a further £600,000 awarded for project development.

The Darwin Centre will help us define the Museum’s role in the twenty-first century. In our Ten Year Vision, which forms part of our Corporate Plan, we set out our commitment to maintaining and developing the Museum’s position as one of the top three natural history institutions of its kind in the world, and one of the UK’s leading visitor attractions.

In the Ten Year Vision we promise to engage more publicly on topical issues in the natural sciences. Although individual Museum scientists often comment on such issues, the Museum itself has tended to steer clear of scientific controversy. This will change as we seek out opportunities through the media, on our web pages and in our galleries to present the facts dispassionately and be the ‘honest broker’.

Our future success as a visitor attraction will depend on our ability to attract a broad and diverse audience. We made excellent progress during the year, with a rich programme of temporary exhibitions and performances designed for a variety of family, school and adult audiences. In a year of intense competition for visitors, when several major new attractions opened their doors for the first time, we experienced only a minor fall-off in visitor numbers. The queues that greeted the arrival of our robotic T. rex were ample evidence of our enduring appeal, in what has become an intensely competitive marketplace. We also made excellent progress in developing our role as a ‘virtual’ visitor attraction: our much-acclaimed website registered more than three million web visits during the year.

A major decision was taken after the year end, when the trustees declared that entry to the Museum would be free to all from 1 December 2001. This followed assurances from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport that we will be compensated for loss of admissions income and that there will be no adverse impact on our VAT position. Although children and pensioners already benefit from free admission, the removal of the remaining charges will open up access even further. We look forward to welcoming more adult visitors than ever before, and to developing innovative exhibitions that engage and entertain them.

Sir Neil Chalmers
Director

For a copy of our Corporate Plan, please call (020) 7942 5480.

OUR WORLD

World class science The Natural History Museum is a world leader in the science of describing the natural world, and our scientists travel the globe to push back the frontiers of knowledge. As well as major research projects in Chile, Thailand and many other parts of the world, we have a permanent field station in Belize. Our science takes us from Antarctica, where we collect meteorites, to the tropics and the Middle East. Strandings of whales and dolphins on UK shores are investigated by Museum scientists. Sri Lankan schoolchildren take an interest in land snails at an exhibit in Colombo prepared with Museum staff.

World class exhibitions Our temporary exhibitions reach far beyond South Kensington. For example, Carnivores delighted audiences in Paris, attracting 320,000 visitors. Eggs & Babies, held in collaboration with the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, opened in Finland. And Voyages of Discovery, our first collections-based exhibition to travel abroad, made its US tour debut at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Closer to home, the Giant Insects and Myths & Monsters touring exhibitions both showed at the Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent. Some 2.3 million people visited the 17 exhibitions that toured 30 countries during the year, generating gross income of nearly £950,000. Our exhibit at EXPO 2000 in Hanover, Germany, featured the Darwin Centre.

THE FRONTIERS OF KNOWLEDGE

The Museum is the custodian of the UK’s national collection of natural history specimens.

More than 350 scientists and curators look after the collection and work on scientific projects relating to systematics – the science of the diversity of organisms.

Systematics allows us to investigate past evolution and current patterns of biodiversity. It includes the science of taxonomy – the naming, describing and classifying of organisms. For the Museum, systematics also embraces the study of minerals, rocks and meteorites, of which it holds one of the world’s finest collections.

During 2001 we clarified our science strategy. In the document Natural Progression, we explain our science, define its aims, demonstrate its relevance and set targets for the future. We are already making significant progress in all of the areas identified as strategic priorities. These include management of the collections, access to information and resources, commercial consultancy, professional training, and of course the multi-stranded research that we believe is key to our continuing relevance as a major international scientific institution.

Natural Progression is at www.nhm.ac.uk/science/strategy.html
or call (020) 7942 5257 for a printed copy.

Accessing information and resources

More and more of our resources are being used beneficially by the international scientific community. Specimens from our collections were on loan to no fewer than 4,211 scientists during the year, and we welcomed 8,538 scientists from other institutions who visited us for a total of 15,396 visitor days.

We introduced a new loan programme, the Museum Treasures scheme, which makes it easier for local and regional museums to borrow items of local, scientific or aesthetic interest from our collections to display as part of their own exhibitions.

The EU has financed the Bioresource project for a further three years. Now renamed SYS-RESOURCE, this project allows researchers from EU member and associated states to apply for funding to access the Museum’s collections, libraries and laboratory facilities, and receive specialist training from our staff. Visits average four weeks in duration. Over 150 researchers have benefited from the project and outputs to date include 50 papers for peer-reviewed journals.

www.nhm.ac.uk/science/treasures
www.nhm.ac.uk/science/rco/sysresource

Managing the collections

The Darwin Centre will set new standards for the management of life science collections. It will ensure optimum conditions for the conservation of specimens and safeguard them for future generations, as well as opening up access to the collections in exciting and innovative ways.

Work has begun on the enormous task of moving 22 million zoological specimens from the Spirit Building to the Darwin Centre. The collection includes invertebrates collected on Captain Cook’s Endeavour voyage of 1763 and specimens from Charles Darwin’s five-year Beagle voyage in 1831. This is the largest relocation since 1881, when over 50,000 bottles of specimens were transported from the British Museum in Bloomsbury to the newly-built Natural History Museum in South Kensington.

Growing our consultancy business

NHM Consulting ensures that our expertise is available on a commercial basis to public and private organizations. The financial surplus for the year amounted to more than £0.5 million, making this its most successful year ever.

Coastal lagoons are a priority ecosystem for conservation under the EU’s Habitats Directive. Our marine scientists carried out monitoring and assessments of lagoons for a number of clients, including English Nature, Cresswell Associates and Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick.

Bovine trypanosomiasis is a new and serious problem in Bolivia. NHM Consulting was contracted by the UK Government’s Department for International Development to contribute to improved control of the disease by investigating potential insect vectors and researching vector control measures.

Our mineralogists provide vital mineral analysis and interpretation to support appropriate exploration worldwide. Advice was provided to some of the largest mining companies including Anglo-Reiko, a subsidiary of Anglo American.

We play a prominent role in the museum collections and display consulting community. During the year we led a trade mission to South Africa on behalf of the Creative Industries Export Promotion Advisory Group.

www.nhm.ac.uk/science/consulting or telephone (020) 7942 5816 for a brochure.

Acquisitions and gifts

The only known portrait of the nineteenth century mineral collector Thomas Allan, painted by Sir John Watson Gordon, was acquired with the aid of a £10,000 grant from the National Art Collections Fund and the support of private donations. Another portrait, of the former Keeper of Natural History Dr George Shaw (1751-1813), was generously presented to the Museum by Sheikh Saud Bin Mohammed Bin Ali Al-Thani.

Several collections of manuscripts, drawings and watercolours were acquired, including three important volumes of works by the entomological artists Eleazar Albin and James Barbut. These were also secured with the aid of funding from the National Art Collections Fund and private donors.

Two important microfossil collections have been donated to the Museum: the Dennis Curry Collection of microfossils and molluscs and the Aberystwyth Micropalaeontology Collection. Dennis Curry’s family has also established a fund to support NHM research. The large Aberystwyth collection was presented to us by the University of Wales.

Promoting professional education

The Museum is making its expertise available to help remedy a worldwide shortage of taxonomists and curators that is constraining progress towards international biodiversity objectives.

We teach advanced academic courses in taxonomy and related subjects. During the year, 25 postgraduate students studied on the MSc course, Advanced Techniques in Systematics and Taxonomy, which we offer in conjunction with Imperial College. We collaborated on supervision for over 140 doctoral research students in partnership with other universities.

We are continuing to develop our successful programme of courses for museum professionals. We now offer nine courses on subjects as varied as museum website design, production of interpretative exhibitions, insect control and training of museum ‘explainers’.

For a copy of our professional courses brochure,
please telephone (020) 7942 5555.

OUR RESEARCH

Our scientists work throughout the world on cutting-edge systematics projects that extend our understanding of the natural world.

Scientific advances in the areas of biodiversity, ecology and conservation, evolution and health are high on our agenda. On these pages we highlight some current projects where we are making a significant contribution, mostly in partnership with other public institutions and scientific bodies around the world.

Another key area of scientific expertise is the origins and history of the Earth, where we have such internationally respected figures as meteoriticist Dr Monica Grady and palaeontologist Professor Chris Stringer on our staff. They are challenging traditional interpretations and communicating their ideas to wide audiences via books and articles, public appearances and television documentaries. Dr Monica Grady enjoyed the unusual honour of having a newly-discovered asteroid named after her.

www.nhm.ac.uk/science

Predicting the spread of disease

Changes in land use can have major consequences for public health. For example, diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and Japanese encephalitis can spread rapidly following deforestation, as new habitats are created that favour the disease-carrying mosquitoes.

Scientists from the Museum are part of an international, EU-funded team that is developing a model capable of predicting the effects of land use change on disease vectors such as mosquitoes. This model will help governments allocate health resources and develop vector control strategies more effectively.

The team is working on patterns of mosquito distribution in Thailand, where the demands of agriculture and economic development have led to extensive land use change. While the model itself will be applicable to Thailand and other countries in South East Asia, the methodology the team is establishing can be used to create models for other disease vectors anywhere in the world.

The Museum is responsible for the entomological fieldwork and systematics, while other partners provide expertise in remote sensing, molecular methods of identification, epidemiology and public health policy.

www.nhm.ac.uk/entomology/ralph.html

Fossils on CD

The new PaleoBase series of CD ROMs opens up our invertebrate fossil collections to palaeontologists and interested amateurs around the world. PaleoBase uses innovative digital imaging techniques developed at the Museum to generate accurate and beautiful images of our specimens, and is the result of a commercial collaboration between our palaeontology and publishing departments, Blackwell Science, and the relational database developers Compustrat. The first CD volume, containing 350 genus-level taxonomic records spanning six fossil groups, was widely acclaimed on its publication in 2001. With two further volumes on invertebrate macrofossils and one on microfossils planned, the series will eventually cover almost all invertebrate fossil groups.

www.paleobase.com

Kihansi spray toad

A new species of dwarf toad has recently been described by scientists at the Museum, working with colleagues from the Universities of York and Dar es Salaam. The Kihansi spray toad, Nectophrynoides asperginis, lives only in the fine mist created by the cascading waters of the Kihansi Falls in the Southern Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania. Sadly, it is threatened with extinction by the diversion of water for a hydroelectric plant. In spite of attempts to install artificial spray systems to preserve its habitat, a captive breeding programme in US zoos may be the toad’s only hope for survival.

Understanding termites

Termites are important contributors to soil biodiversity – particularly in the tropics, where they act as ‘ecosystem engineers’ helping to recycle the soil’s constituents and creating habitats that other species can exploit.

For the past nine years, Museum entomologists have been collecting and studying termite data collected from 40 tropical forest sites. Their work has advanced our understanding of the complex and varied roles that termites play in tropical ecosystems around the world.

Moreover, with the aid of funding from the Darwin Initiative for the Survival of Species, they have been able to develop an efficient methodology for examining the diversity of soil fauna. With most of the world’s tropical insects still undescribed, reliable tools are urgently required: the new methodology is simple to use and requires only one short period of introductory training.

www.nhm.ac.uk/science/intro/entom/project3

Monitoring pollution in the South Urals

The mining and smelting industry is the economic engine of the South Urals region in Russia – but it is also the source of massive environmental problems. Sulphur dioxide emissions contaminate the air while effluents pollute the watercourses and lakes. Although vegetables grown in the region contain up to ten times the national permitted levels of lead, nickel and arsenic, until now no systematic study has been carried out to determine the nature and scale of the problem.

A mutidisciplinary team from the Museum recently began work on a major three-year project funded by the EU called MinUrals. Comprising mineralogists, botanists and entomologists, the team has already conducted extensive fieldwork at three sites to establish the impact of past and present mining activities on the region’s environment. Monitoringand predictive techniques are under development that will enable the regional authorities to minimize future pollution.

We are also studying the region’s geochemistry with a view to identifying new and alternative targets for mineral exploitation, as many of the mineral deposits still being worked are uneconomic.

The Museum is one of nine EU and Russian partners who are working together to develop a comprehensive strategy of regulation and legislation which will balance the benefits of mining for the local communities with the need for environmental controls. The MinUrals project will also help other mining regions around the world tackle similar environmental challenges.

www.nhm.ac.uk/mineralogy/bwilliamson/minurals.htm

Action on UK biodiversity

Most people are well aware of the threat to ‘celebrity’ species such as the giant panda and the tiger. What is less widely appreciated is that many species on our own doorstep are declining rapidly through habitat loss, pollution and climate change – and some are facing extinction.

For many years the Museum has been at the forefront of research into our national biodiversity. Now we are stepping up our role, working alongside partners to defend Britain’s vulnerable wildlife. We are leading on the conservation of several threatened species, including the elusive mole cricket and the attractive Killarney fern. Many members of staff are personally involved – privately through their out-of-hours work for wildlife organizations and professionally through a range of flora and fauna projects, from small research studies on individual species to major, multi-stranded visions such as the National Biodiversity Network (NBN).

NBN is a pioneering initiative to gather UK wildlife information and make it widely accessible via the internet. It is a key element in the Biodiversity Action Plan, the UK Government’s programme to deliver the objectives set out in the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity. The Museum is closely involved with the NBN and is leading the preparation of the Species Dictionary, a comprehensive inventory of all UK wildlife.

We appointed two UK Biodiversity Coordinators in 2000 with funding for three years from English Nature. As well as focusing on under-recorded invertebrate and plant species, the coordinators are establishing strong links with statutory agencies, specialists, wildlife societies and enthusiastic amateurs.

Amateurs can make a valuable contribution to the conservation of our biodiversity. Anyone can help, simply by joining a local branch of the Wildlife Trust, the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, or one of the more specialized naturalists’ societies such as Butterfly Conservation. Gardeners can provide foodplants and habitats for wildlife by growing suitable native plant species in their gardens – the Postcode Plants Database at our Flora for Fauna website is a useful resource.

Visit www.nbn.org.uk for further information on the NBN.

ON VIEW

The Natural History Museum’s increasingly diversified exhibitions and education programmes are bringing the wonder and beauty of the natural world to more people than ever before.

As well as appealing to our core constituencies of families, school parties and natural history enthusiasts, our exhibitions programme is attracting new kinds of visitors – people who in the past have been under-represented among our visitors.

Our programme during the year combined popular entertainments with broad appeal for family audiences, such as Tyrannosaurus rex, with more challenging attractions such as Rhythms of Life. Our art exhibitions are bringing in adult audiences who want to see contemporary work in imaginative settings, as well as masterpieces of natural history illustration from our historical collections. The stimulating art-science collaborations that we launched in 1999 continued to engage adult audiences – notably with Forkbeard Fantasy’s production of The Brain, which sold out all six of its performances.

Over half a million people took part in our education programme, from children participating in our Walking with Woodlice online survey to retired people joining our study courses. We have now joined fathom.com, the online knowledge and learning resource, in order to extend our outreach further.

We continued to invest in facilities and improvements to the built environment that enhance the visitor experience. For example, we refurbished the schools assembly area as part of the Clore Education Centre; we opened a new café and Discovery Room at Tring; and we embarked on a series of practical measures to improve access for people with disabilities.

Dinosaur draw

Long queues formed along the Cromwell Road in February 2001 when the world’s most advanced robotic dinosaur took up a two-year residence at the Museum.

To deal with the unprecedented demand, we introduced our first ever timed ticketing system and we employed entertainers to keep visitors in good humour while they waited in the queue. Over 150,000 people came to see the new arrival in the first six weeks and the extra revenue generated from admissions soon covered the costs of presenting the exhibit.

The cause of all the excitement was a three-quarter size Tyrannosaurus rex model, standing four metres high by nearly seven metres long and incorporating the latest technology. Animatronic modelling has advanced significantly since 1991, when our previous robotic display was installed. The Museum has been working in partnership with the makers Kokoro Dreams to develop a range of lifelike dinosaur models. T. rex is so scarily convincing that we have had to apply a PG (parental guidance) restriction.

In rhythm

Our major temporary exhibition of the year was Rhythms of Life. This stimulating family show explored a diverse and fascinating subject – how all living things adapt to the rhythms of nature. An innovative combination of sound track, interactive exhibits, cartoons, models and specimens communicated ideas around three themes: rhythms through the days, cycles of the seasons and life cycles.

An extensive programme of activities and events accompanied the exhibition, including sessions with Museum scientists, practical workshops, performances of Repercussions of Life by the theatre company Scarabeus, a gallery character called Circadian Sam, and a new ‘Seasons’ website.

flood.nhm.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wgarden

Capturing the imagination

Investigate, which opened in April 2000 in the Clore Education Centre, is proving to be a popular attraction for school and family groups. Made possible by a £1 million donation from the Vivien Duffield Foundation, Investigate adopts a new and fresh approach to the hands-on exploration of science based on creative discovery. Rather than following set procedures and actions, visitors are encouraged to exercise their curiosity using the tools and specimens provided.

Visitors select the subject of their exploration from the Specimen Wall. They can examine the specimen at one of the workstations equipped with computers, magnifiers, microscopes and measurers. Q-cards provided at each workstation offer ideas for further investigation. The Living Things, Sticky Wall and Courtyard Garden areas provide more opportunities for discovery.

www.nhm.ac.uk/education/investigate

Brainstorming

Art and science came together in July 2000 when It’s in Your Head opened at the Museum. This exhibition showed works by young UK artists exploring themes associated with the human mind such as perception, memory and visual ambiguity.

The exhibition was the culmination of a year-long programme of workshops between neuroscientists, arts professionals and young artists, and featured the best work from ten arts centres around the UK. Each arts centre focused on a particular area of research and interpreted their findings using different media, from electronic imaging and sculpture to photography and video installation.

BG Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The Museum again hosted and co-organized the internationally acclaimed BG Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, now in its eleventh year of sponsorship by BG Group.

The winning image fought off competition from 19,000 entries from more than 60 countries. All 120 winning and highly commended images went on display in the Jerwood Gallery and are now touring worldwide. This year the exhibition will visit China for the first time.

BG Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2000:
Manoj Shah, Orang-utan and Baby.

BG Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year:
Kobe Van Looveren, Small Copper Among Grasses.

Eric Hosking Award:
Vincent Munier

Gerald Durrell Award:
Nick Garbutt, Bengal Tiger on a Forest Track.
pictured above

http://flood.nhm.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wildwin/2001/index.html

Tring successes

The Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum attracted national media attention during the year with its entertaining summer exhibition Eating Creepy Crawlies. The combination of photographs, specimens, recipes, wacky insect snacks, taste and nutritional information caught the public’s imagination, and one TV presenter even ate fried locusts on air.

The Museum continued to enhance its relevance as a venue for schools. The number of school children visiting the Museum was 50 per cent higher than the previous year, following the introduction of object-based teaching sessions directly related to the Science National Curriculum.

www.nhm.ac.uk/museum/tring

Beyond words

The evolutionary biologist Professor John Maynard Smith FRS gave the Annual Science Lecture in the Museum’s Central Hall in November 2000. Animal communication was the theme in a thought-provoking talk that ranged across the evolution of animal societies and the development of language – perhaps the most significant difference between humans and other animals. Such eminent speakers as Professor Richard Dawkins, Sir David Attenborough and Stephen Jay Gould have helped to establish the Lecture as one of the most important national forums for discussion of topical scientific issues.

Courses for adults

For those who wish to learn more about the natural sciences, the Museum provides a rich programme of educational courses and events. There are workshops, day schools and afternoon courses covering a variety of themes in earth sciences, life sciences and natural history illustration. We also offer a programme of botanical and geological field-based learning events. Tutors are chosen for their knowledge and communication skills, and many are members of the scientific staff at the Museum.

Following the Museum’s publication of Nature’s Connections: An Exploration of Natural History by Nicola McGirr, we arranged a special series of 20 lectures. The speakers developed themes raised in the book, which traces the development of natural sciences. Transcripts of the lectures can be found on www.fathom.com.

www.nhm.ac.uk/education/adult_education

Telephone (020) 7942 5555 for further information.

Membership gives people the opportunity to support the Museum’s work through subscriptions and voluntary work, while enjoying privileged access to workshops, private views and other benefits. We even arrange exclusive visits to key scientific locations.

The scheme has grown steadily since its inception six years ago. Membership stood at 11,300 at the year end – its highest ever – and profitability was achieved for the first time.

You can become a Member online at www.nhm.ac.uk/membership. Telephone (020) 7942 5788

COMMUNICATING OUR MESSAGE

Online

The Museum was one of the first major UK museums to develop its own website. From the outset, we recognized the internet’s potential as a medium for reaching out to scientific and educational communities around the world, and for promoting our activities to a wide public audience. Our strategy of continual site expansion and enhancement has paid off, with web visits increasing by no less than 83 per cent over the year, from 1.7 million to 3.1 million.

Recent developments include the expansion of our hosting programme – 18 natural sciences organizations currently have pages on our website – and new sections dedicated to the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum at Tring and to the identification of echinoids. The latter won an award in the prestigious US journal Science. We also won awards for Worldmap and for the Dino Directory, which is one of our site’s most popular features. Our online bookshop was introduced in February, selling books published under the Museum’s own imprint.

Two new online science databases were launched, covering the Hermann and Clifford Herbaria and Global Tineidae moths. We are currently preparing a comprehensive online digital description of all our collections. This will be launched to coincide with the public opening of Phase One of the Darwin Centre in September 2002.

www.nhm.ac.uk

In print

The Museum’s publishing programme has a vital role to play in communicating our work to specialist audiences and to the general public. We publish under our own imprint and in joint arrangements with commercial and academic publishers. We achieve high levels of exposure for our scientists and for the Museum cost-effectively. Several eminent authors are based at the Museum, including Richard Fortey, the author of Trilobite!.

The two new series that we launched during the year were well received. The Life Series is co-published with the Smithsonian Institution Press and so far comprises five titles: Lichens, Snakes, Deep Ocean, Coral Fish and Search for Life. We also launched the Weird and Wonderful series with Oxford University Press, aimed at 7 to 11 year-olds.

Several major works of scholarship appeared including a new edition of the Catalogue of Meteorites, published by Cambridge University Press, which sold out its initial print run in record time.

See the enclosed supplement for a full list of titles published by the Museum during the year.

www.nhm.ac.uk/services/publishing
www.nhm.ac.uk/shop/index.html

The online picture library continued to expand during the year, almost doubling its bank of images to 12,500. It was the first of our e-commerce businesses, which now include an online bookshop and Membership subscription facilities.

www.nhm.ac.uk/services/piclib

THE BUSINESS

The Museum’s management team is striving to maximize revenue from commercial activities while constantly improving the efficiency of our operations.

Grant-in-aid and sponsorship are not in themselves sufficient to fund our diverse scientific and public programmes, and the substantial capital costs associated with our buildings – so we must manage our resources more actively than ever before.

All our commercial activities now have positive business plans in place with clear targets. During the year we held a successful internal business conference to identify ways of generating more income. One of the new opportunities we are actively developing is a partnership with the Japan-based company Kokoro Dreams to market animatronic models such as T. rex
in Europe and the Middle East.

As part of our drive to raise efficiency, we are developing a benchmarking programme that will allow us to measure our outputs against those of comparable organizations. We have reduced our energy consumption by 10 per cent through improved building management, and we launched a successful programme to reduce staff absences.

Our capacity to attract and retain quality people was strengthened with the introduction of several initiatives, including a scheme of corporate development leave which allows members of staff to apply for paid leave while they complete appropriate Museum-related work.

Staff communications and training continued to be a priority, with further developments to the intranet, publication of a new Staff Handbook and Financial Regulations, ongoing investment in our staff magazine Waterhouse Times, and a programme of quarterly Talkback sessions giving staff the opportunity to catch up on developments and question senior management. 173 in-house courses were organized for the Museum’s 837 full- and part-time staff during the year.

Development of our IT infrastructure and resources is a major focus of attention. We have carried out a fundamental review of IT requirements that identified the continued upgrading of our data network as the immediate priority. The review also highlighted computer security and the need to put comprehensive policy frameworks in place to cover intellectual property, data protection and freedom of information.

Competing for visitors

London’s visitor attractions faced tough competition from new entrants such as the Dome, the London Eye and Tate Modern, which all opened during millennium year.

The Natural History Museum fared better than many of the capital’s established attractions, with visitor numbers down by just 6 per cent to 1.66 million over the financial year. Numbers of children in school parties also declined, not only because of competition from millennium attractions but because building work to improve the schools assembly area reduced our capacity. However, free admission for pensioners, introduced in April 2000, helped to raise adult attendances and the success of T. rex in the final quarter of the financial year boosted visitor numbers substantially.

Attendances at the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum at Tring rose by no less than 22 per cent to 59,000, following the introduction of new facilities and a more active marketing programme.

Understanding our audiences

Market research helps us assess our performance and shape our future programmes around the needs of audiences. In 2000 we conducted a reputation audit with key groups including opinion formers, teachers, members and sponsors. And we have recently initiated two further research projects – to help us assess the appeal of potential temporary exhibitions and identify how representative our visitors are of museum-goers and the general public. The latter exercise will provide baseline information for the strategic marketing plan currently in preparation.

We obtained useful feedback from our first ever Public Open Meeting, held in November 2000. This gave us an opportunity to meet with stakeholders and hear their views about our current performance and future plans. We are acting on ideas expressed at the meeting, including the suggestion that the Museum should take a higher profile in public debates of topical scientific issues such as global warming and genetically-modified foods.

SUPPORTING US

Museum Trustees
Main Board Trustees

Lord Oxburgh KBE FRS (Chairman)
Ms Jana Bennett
Professor Michael Hassell FRS
Professor Christopher Leaver CBE FRS
Dr Anne McLaren DBE FRS FRCOG
Miss Judith Mayhew
Professor Sir Keith O’Nions FRS
Lord Palumbo
Professor Linda Partridge FRS FRSE
Mr Oliver Stocken
Sir Richard Sykes FRS
Sir Crispin Tickell GCMG KCVO

Development

The Natural History Museum’s Development Office raises funds for a variety of projects, from exhibitions and scientific research to educational outreach and building programmes. Individuals, companies, charitable trusts and foundations generously support our work, and in return we offer a range of benefits such as supporter credit, PR and marketing opportunities, client entertaining, discounted gallery hire and private receptions.

In May 2000, the Development Trust, a separate charity formed to raise funds for the Museum’s priority projects, was dissolved. Fundraising activities are now undertaken by the Development Office.

The Development Office secured pledges of over £2.2 million in new funds from private sources, including two significant grants for the Darwin Centre Campaign from The Garfield Weston Foundation and The Cadogan Charity. We are also grateful to BG Group for their continued support of the BG Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. The Seventh Annual Fundraising Ball – the Rhythms of Life Ball – attracted nearly 400 guests and generated a net profit of over £30,000. We also progressed our legacy programme, which we hope will form an important element in our long-term funding plans for the Museum.

To make a donation, or to discuss the opportunities for corporate sponsorship, please contact our Development Office on (020) 7942 5266.

Major Museum Supporters

£1 million plus
The Garfield Weston Foundation

£500,000 to £999,999
The Cadogan Charity

£20,000 to £99,999
BP plc
British Airways plc
GlaxoSmithKline plc
Pfizer Limited
Coral Samuel Charitable Trust

£10,000 to £19,999
American Express Europe Limited
Deutsche Bank
John Lewis Partnership
Morgan Stanley
Zephyr – TVC

£5,000 to £9,999
Citigate Dewe Rogerson
Mr John Duggan
Mrs Angela Marmont
Mrs Norma Smurfit
Mr Tony Tabatznik

£1,000 to £4,999
Almond Resorts
Amalgamated Metal Corporation plc
Amerada Hess Limited
Barbados Tourism Authority
Mr Henry Barlow OBE
The Berkeley Group plc
Bloomberg LP
The BOC Foundation
The P H G Cadbury Charitable Trust
Citibank, N.A.
Mr Philip Darwin CA
Professor & Mrs Donald S Davies
Mr Bernie Ecclestone
English Tailoring
Enron Europe Limited
Fenner plc
First Choice
Fishburn Hedges
The Golden Bottle Trust
Groupama UK Services Limited
Hawkpoint Partners Limited
Mr Michael Henderson
Mr Anthony M Hoare
Insinger Townsley
The Inverforth Charitable Trust
Lovells
Lyons+Sleeman+Hoare
Molton Brown
The Monument Trust
Mustard Catering Limited
Mr Elvin E Patrick
Prudential plc
RMC Group plc
The Rosesaliba Partnership
Schroder Salomon Smith Barney
Shepherd Building Group
Mr Harvey M Soning
The Joseph Strong Frazer Trust
Sunley Holdings plc
Technology & Internet Services plc
Mr Charles Williams

Members of the Corporate Patron Programme

Partner
BP plc
British Airways plc
GlaxoSmithKline plc
Pfizer Limited

Benefactor
American Express Europe Limited
BG Group
John Lewis Partnership
Morgan Stanley
Rio Tinto plc
Zephyr - TVC

Affiliate
Citibank, N.A.
De Beers
Groupama UK Services Limited
RMC Group plc
Sunley Holdings plc

The Museum is grateful to these and
all its other supporters.

FINANCIAL REVIEW

Our new three-year funding agreement with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) was signed during the year and came into effect in April 2001.

Under the agreement, DCMS undertakes to provide assured levels of financial support provided the Museum meets agreed performance targets. Baseline grant-in-aid has been set at £28.9 million for each of the three years. DCMS will provide additional funding to compensate for loss of income from the withdrawal of admission charges for adults, which takes effect on 1 December 2001. The Museum will receive £6.6 million in the first full year, rising by 2 per cent the following year to allow free admission for all visitors.

DCMS has also promised £6 million to finance essential refurbishment to the Palaeontology Building. This 1970s development has been afflicted by design and construction problems since it opened and we are most grateful to DCMS for stepping in with much of the finance required to rectify the most pressing problems.

While the funding agreement represents a major step forward, we do have concerns that inflation will reduce the real level of grant-in-aid over the duration of the agreement. We have therefore taken the prudent step of deferring some capital expenditure, including investment in scientific equipment and refurbishment of the permanent exhibitions.

TOTAL INCOME

98/99

£47.0m
99/00

£48.9m
00/01

£48.6m

NET TRADING INCOME

98/99

6.6m
99/00

6.2m
00/01

6.7m

CAPITAL EXPENDITURE

98/99

£6.6m
99/00

£15.3m
00/01

6.7m

PROJECT INCOME FROM SPONSORSHIP

98/99

£1.9m
99/00

£3.1m
00/01

£2.3m

Income and expenditure

Grant-in-aid accounted for around 80 per cent of our funding in the 2000/2001 year. The remainder came from admission charges, sponsorship and donations, and commercial activities such as retailing, consultancy, functions, the picture library and publishing.

Total available income rose by just over £1 million to £38.7 million. An increase in admissions charges during the year boosted income and helped to offset the effects of intensified competition for visitors. Grant-in-aid also increased, while income from commercial activities was maintained. Revenue from sponsorship and donations was down on the exceptional levels of the previous year.

Efficiency improvements and tight control over costs helped us to reduce current expenditure to £30.2 million.

Almost all of the £6.9 million of buildings capital expenditure was accounted for by Darwin Centre construction costs.

INCOME	1998/99	99/2000	2000/01
	£k	£k	£k

Self-generated and trading income
Admissions	4,475.7	3,954.5	4,383.4
Membership	195.9	177.5	201.2
Licensing	254.8	217.3	271.4
Retail	1,854.5	1,925.7	1,969.2
Catering	280.9	241.7	245.3
Conferencing and events	1,603.0	1,801.4	1,839.7
Exhibitions and education	328.8	452.2	240.2
Curation and research	3,018.5	3,265.6	3,457.0
Touring exhibitions	752.0	1,077.6	942.9

Total	12,764.1	13,113.5	13,550.3

Costs	6,224.4	6,933.0	6,817.3

Profit	6,539.7	6,180.5	6,733.0


Sponsorship and other income
Sponsorship and donations	1,864.6	3,134.5	2,317.6
Other income	3,465.9	3,051.2	2,309.2

	5,330.5	6,185.7	4,626.8

Costs	2,526.6	4,345.0	3,091.8


Net other income	2,803.9	1,840.7	1,535.0

Heritage lottery funding	1,931.1	-	-

Grant in aid	26,960.0	29,583.0	30,408.0

Total available	38,234.7	37,604.2	38,676.0

EXPENDITURE	1998/99	99/2000	2000/01
	£k	£k	£k

Current
Buildings and rates	6,580.6	5,328.5	4,746.7
Development and marketing	1,041.8	1,110.2	1,064.6
Visitor services	3,821.3	3,900.4	3,933.9
Exhibitions and education	3,992.7	3,991.7	4,042.6
Curation and research	10,779.6	11,179.1	11,102.9
Libraries and information systems	2,051.5	2,328.3	2,234.5
Corporate services	2,855.8	2,905.5	2,850.5
Restructuring	321.3	335.3	265.5

Total	31,444.6	31,078.9	30,241.2


Capital
Buildings	3,695.6	14,769.5	6,197.4
Exhibitions	2,302.5	-12.8	181.4
Equipment	657.7	542.0	507.4

Total	6,655.9	15,298.7	6,886.2


Total expenditure	38,100.5	46,377.6	37,127.4

The figures shown are an overview and are subject to final audit. For a complete set of the
Museum’s audited annual accounts, please contact:
The Stationery Office, PO Box 276, London SW8 5DT, telephone (020) 7873 0011.

Risk management

Our internal audit team continued to work closely with heads of department to ensure that the Museum has an effective risk management process in place. The work achieved so far has been cited by the National Audit Office and DCMS as an example of best practice.

Funding for research

Research councils and other grant-awarding bodies help to fund the Museum’s curation and research activities. The largest grants for projects that commenced during the year were:

· £791,463 from the Wellcome Trust for research into evolution from genes and evolution of genes among the parasitic platyhelminths.
· £232,992 from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council for work on expressed sequence tags for molecular systematics.
· £223,602 from the EU for a study of mineral resource use and environmental impacts in the Urals – see page 18.
· £187,534 from the Natural Environment Research Council for research into novel archaea in coastal marine sediments.
· £174,408 from the Natural Environment Research Council for work on marine diversity focus in the Indo-West Pacific Ocean.
· £165,000 from English Nature for coordinating the survey and monitoring of cryptogamic plants and invertebrates – part of the Museum’s work on UK biodiversity.
· £143,032 from the Natural Environment Research Council for work on species-level phylogenies to explain diversification in a lineage of tiger beetles.
· £137,978 from the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council for a study of fluid process in the solar system, including the role of water on Mars.
· £100,633 from the Darwin Initiative for developing tools for monitoring soil biodiversity in the ASEAN region.
· £93,090 from the Wellcome Trust for a pilot study of genetic diversity within Schistosoma haematobium and the use of Bulinus nastus for controlling schistosomiasis.
· £78,000 from the Institut Laue-Langevin in support of work on proton ordering and negative thermal expansion in metatorbernite.
· £68,849 from the EU for research into the evolution and diversification of ferns.
· £40,575 from the Leverhulme Trust for work on the role of habitat constraints in the evolution and macroecology of water beetles.
· £37,520 from the Natural Environment Research Council for research into the geological history of deep-sea colonization.
· £35,423 from the Wellcome Trust for research on characteristics of tooth enamel as indicators of stress in human development.

TOTAL RESEARCH GRANTS

98/99

£1.6m
99/00

£1.7m
00/01

£2.2m

LOOKING AHEAD

Exhibitions

2001 is The Year of the Predator at The Natural History Museum. Predators, our current major exhibition, shows how animals have evolved to prey on others or to defend themselves. It features robotic models of a great white shark, a chameleon and a deadly Sydney funnel web spider. 18 July 2001 – 6 May 2002.
www.nhm.ac.uk/museum/tempexhib/predators

Olly & Suzi Untamed is a major art installation featuring works by the collaborative artists Olly & Suzi, who paint dangerous predators in extreme environments and encourage the animals to interact with their paintings. 18 July 2001 – 6 May 2002.
www.nhm.ac.uk/museum/tempexhib/predators/olly_suzi.html

The BG Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition opens on 27 October 2001 and runs until Spring 2002.
http://flood.nhm.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wildwin/2001/index.htm

Two major exhibitions for 2002 are Dino-Birds: The Feathered Dinosaurs of China and Turbulent Landscapes, in which artists illuminate the underlying order in the chaotic patterns and processes of nature.

Darwin Centre

· The zoological collections will be installed in their new home in Phase One of the Darwin Centre by October 2001.

· The internal fit-out will be completed in November 2001.

· During the first half of 2002, scientists and curators will settle in while the programme of tours, video presentations and interactive displays is developed and tested.

· Phase One of the Darwin Centre will open to the public in September 2002.

· An architectural practice will be chosen in November 2001 to design Phase Two, which will house the Museum’s insect and plant collections. Phase Two is planned to open to the public in 2006.

CONTACTS

Director Sir Neil Chalmers (020) 7942 5480

Audit David Thorpe (020) 7942 5307

Botany Richard Bateman (020) 7942 5282

Darwin Centre Graham Pellow (020) 7942 5376

Development Paul Kelly (020) 7942 5252

Entomology Dick Vane-Wright (020) 7942 5737

Estates Kevin Rellis (020) 7942 5281

Exhibitions and Education Giles Clarke (020) 7942 5284

Finance Neil Greenwood (020) 7942 5034

Human Resources David Hill (020) 7942 5514

Library and Information Services Ray Lester (020) 7942 5261

Marketing and Business Development Sharon Ament (020) 7942 5253

Membership Terry Lester (020) 7942 5788

Mineralogy Andrew Fleet (020) 7942 5123

Palaeontology Stephen Donovan (020) 7942 5204

Science Directorate Paul Henderson (020) 7942 5374

Tring Teresa Wild (020) 7942 6155

Visitor Services Deirdre Candlin (020) 7942 5426

Zoology Philip Rainbow (020) 7942 5276

Media Enquiries Press Office (020) 7942 5654 - press@nhm.ac.uk

The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD. Telephone (020) 7942 5000

The Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum, Akeman Street, Tring, Hertfordshire HP23 6AP. Telephone (020) 7942 6158

This report is also available in large print, Braille and audio cassette.

For copies please contact
Wendy Ladd, Communications
The Natural History Museum,
Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD.
Telephone (020) 7942 5067
W.Ladd@nhm.ac.uk

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For comments on this website please email W.Ladd@nhm.ac.uk

CREDITS

This report covers the year
1 April 2000 to 31 March 2001

© The Natural History Museum 2001

Produced by Communications
The Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road
London SW7 5BD
Telephone +44 (0)20 7942 5067
communications@nhm.ac.uk
www.nhm.ac.uk

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Telephone (020) 7942 5401
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