We the undersigned, support the Science staff of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, asking that Richard Deverell the Director, and Trustees reconsider their stated intention to move the Herbarium collection from Kew Gardens to a new building to be constructed south of Reading in a commercial science park using UK taxpayers’ funds.

Background

The Kew Herbarium is arguably the major global centre for the definitive identification and naming of our planet’s wild plant species, crucial for their conservation and for evaluation of potential uses. 

Part of the government-funded Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Herbarium & Library were founded in 1851 and occupy a prominent place on Kew Green. The building complex supports research based on the synergies of c.7 million authoritatively named, expertly curated herbarium specimens, a staff of more than 40 experts in plant taxonomy, biology and conservation, a major botanical reference library, the living collections, and partnerships with over 100 countries especially in the global south.

The plan to move this centre of excellence risks serious damage to this global centre for plant taxonomy, by isolating the herbarium at the new site over an hour distant, dividing it from the living collections in the gardens, from the library, from the Jodrell laboratories, the MSc and PhD students and other scientists at Kew Gardens, important for its efficient operation. It would be removing the beating heart from the body of RBG, Kew.

Moving the Kew Herbarium would also make access much more difficult for the hundreds of visiting scientists from around the world, crucial for safeguarding standards and collaborative research. 

Additional operational costs of running an isolated new site would pose a challenging ongoing financial burden on RBG, Kew and its principal funder, DEFRA (Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs).

A new building in a remote green field site would have major environmental impacts due to construction and commuting (“the greenest buildings are already built”).

Such a move would disrupt ongoing urgent work by Kew taxonomists addressing the global extinction crisis, discovering and naming the thousands of plant species that remain unknown to science, before they become extinct, to improve their conservation outcomes and research new uses.

More than 170 Kew staff have expressed their concerns to the Trustees about the off siting proposal.

Twenty scientists made presentations to the Trustees showing that such a move of the herbarium is unnecessary, since the existing, purpose-built herbarium complex at Kew Gardens, especially the historic Grade II* Listed Buildings, originating in the Victorian period, remain ideal for taxonomic research. These buildings have housed herbarium specimens without detectable deterioration for up to over 170 years. 

Further,

a) claimed risks to the specimens at Kew Gardens have been shown to be exaggerated or without verifiable evidential basis (presentations available on request)

b) vacant herbarium space, purpose built in 2009, exists for a further 1 million specimens (c. 90 years at current accession rates).

It is a bad idea and unnecessary, to isolate the herbarium at a remote new site, to damage its functioning, and to make such a major demand on the taxpayer, estimated to be in the region of £200-300 million. 

We urge that resources available are directed instead at further renovating and improving the existing herbarium buildings at Kew Gardens rather than constructing a new building. 

The plan to off-site the herbarium is counterproductive to addressing the urgent global extinction crisis. It makes a mockery of Kew’s mission statement “to understand and protect plants and fungi, for the wellbeing of people and the future of all life in earth”.

The biodiversity crisis is now, and all effort should be directed to efficient research in the immediate future rather than years hence, by which time it may be too late.