Researchers call on Duke University to reconsider its herbarium closure

A collection of dried plants, algae, fungi, lichen and more will leave Duke University.

The plants are preserved and dried to be called upon later for research inside what’s called a herbarium. The director of Duke University’s Herbarium, which has been in operation for a century, said the relocation could have impacts on how we learn about our environment.

“You can use climate data ... to be able to track what the temperature, humidity, precipitation was at any location 150 years ago and predict into the future what it might be,” director Kathleen Pryer told WRAL News.

The university’s dean of Natural Sciences, Susan Alberts, said the closure was a "difficult decision."

“Academic leaders have made the difficult decision to relocate the Duke Herbarium and its specimens," Alberts said. "Our ability to continue responsibly hosting such a valuable collection at Duke would require the investment of significant, long-term resources to support both substantial facilities renovations and expert personnel and at the expense of many other urgent priorities.

"We are at the beginning of a multi-year process to identify recipients for the herbarium collections, and we are committed to the protection and preservation of those specimens throughout that process. We hope and expect that faculty and students will continue to conduct research on the herbarium specimens in their new homes. There remains a great deal of biodiversity research taking place at Duke across ever-more diverse fields within and beyond biology."

Because Duke’s collection is so big, Pryer said the specimens will likely end up in various, separate places.

“There is no place in world that could absorb the collection in its entirety,” Pryer said.

However, Pryer said she would prefer seeing everything stay together.

“It is a sacred collection," Pryer said. "To think about it being dispersed all over the world is absolutely nonsensical. It would be a great loss to biodiversity studies.”

Pryer said a donor was willing and interested in starting a $3 million endowment for the herbarium.

“As soon as the administration got wind of that, they had to show their hand," Pryer said. "I believe for a very long time, this has been the plan, but they just decided that I couldn't be getting money for something they wanted to throw away.”

WRAL News asked the university about the endowment. Alberts said the university had a "preliminary conversation" with the potential donor. She said the costs of continuing to host the herbarium far exceeds "any donor interest expressed to date."

A change.org petition has already garnered more than 14,000 signatures. In it says, "By closing their herbarium, they risk losing valuable opportunities for future discoveries that could have profound impacts on our understanding of the world."

The Natural Science Collections Alliance agrees, says it’s "deeply concerned" knowing that Duke has the "largest herbarium in the southeastern U.S." In fact, the alliance says its closure ‘sets a terrible precedent.’

Pryer said an herbarium is like a library or museum, a place where people can gather information about the various plants and specimens. There is a major difference, however.

“People have libraries all over the world," Prer said. "We have the same copies that Yale has, that Harvard has ... Every herbaria that a herbarium has are absolutely unique.”

The university says it expects the relocation to happen over the next two to three years.

“An exact start date is yet to be determined, and depends on how conversations progress with the established and highly regarded prospective recipients for the specimens,” Alberts said.