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Specimen Acquisition
and Preservation Program...
The WFVZ houses more than three hundred individual collections,
totally more than 270,000 specimens. Foundation
staff continually strive to locate and acquire research and teaching
specimens to add to the collections. For example, the Foundation has been a repository for
donations of institutional egg collections, resulting in almost half of the egg
sets in North American museum collections being donated to the WFVZ.
In addition, West Nile Virus reached California in 2004, and we received many
corvids and other birds as a result.
The primary sources for specimens currently are wildlife rehabilitation organizations;
car, cat, and window-killed birds; wildlife research agencies and organizations; and the Foundation’s
own field research projects. Materials
are consistently acquired by the Western Foundation and used by
researchers, educators, scientific artists, and other museums. In
addition, materials are used in educational tours and presentations
for the general public, both at the Foundation and at outside events. All materials are actively maintained to be free of parasites and
dust, so that the items can be available for research and education
purposes in perpetuity.
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