BUTANTAN FIRE IN BRAZIL DESTROYS HISTORIC SPECIMEN COLLECTION

Dear Colleagues:

By now most of you may have heard of the terrible accident that wiped the largest snake and invertebrate collection in Brazil (80,000 snake specimens and 450,000 invertebrates).

There aren't many large collections in Brazil, and this is by far the largest lost we ever had of scientific material. The collection contained the largest geographic coverage, the largest number of type specimens, and the largest number of ongoing projects on snake taxonomy in the country. Students lost their dissertations and thesis, professors lost a life of research. It is hard to quantify the magnitude of this lost at the moment, but the accident will likely defray the growth of our knowledge on neotropical snake taxonomy for decades.

At this moment researchers in Brazil have been discussing how we can help. The building will need to be demolished, as the fire condemned it beyond reconstruction. Specimen donations will occur only after this problem is solved.

Another terrible aspect of this accident was the lost of bibliographic material. Again, as with collections, we do not have many comprehensive libraries. The curator of the snake collection, Dr. Francisco Franco (aka Kiko) is a bibliophile and likely had one of the largest libraries on neotropical snakes. All his books and reprints were lost in the fire.

Many in the herpetological community have spare reprints and book. Because of this, we are now organizing book and reprint donations to the herpetology lab of Butantan Institute.

Donations can be sent to the following address:

Dr. Francisco Franco
Instituto Butantan
Laboratório de Herpetologia
Av. Doutor Vital Brazil, 1500, São Paulo, SP 05503-900 Brazil

Cheers
Mario