Our Discovery Mission
Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to discover and document all remaining Australian species of plants, animals, fungi and other organisms ... in a generation.
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How on Earth are we going to do this?
There are two common reactions to the idea that we could launch a grand science mission to discover and document all remaining Australian species in a generation.
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The reaction from people outside our sector is almost invariably "Wow - that would be great!"
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The reaction from taxonomists inside our sector is often "But that's impossible!"
Hercules moth, north Queensland. Image: Tapio Linderhaus
The difference between these two reactions is instructive. The idea 'we're going to discover and document all remaining Australian species in a generation' is a great outward-facing message. The public, business leaders, politicians and their advisors relate to its clarity, its ambition, its scope and the fact that it implies a goal and a measurable target.
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Of course, such people have no idea how hard it will be, what exactly it means, or how on Earth we'll do it.
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Nevertheless, it works as an outward-facing message, and taxonomy and biosystematics need good outward-facing messages.
Drosera, Kuranda. Photo: Tapio Linderhaus
So what exactly does 'discover and document all remaining Australian species in a generation' mean? This is tricky. Taken at face value it means that, if we were successful, after a generation has passed we will never again discover another new Australian species, ever.
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This of course is ridiculous, not least because species discovery follows a law of diminishing return - discovering new species is relatively easy at first, but gets harder and harder as the goal is approached.
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So we won't achieve our goal exactly.
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Does this mean we need to change the message to a more accurate one, something like 'we aim to discover and document 90% (or 85%, or 78%) of all Australian species in a generation'?
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Unfortunately, while this is more accurate, it's also less effective.
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So how about a message 'we want to increase the rate at which we discover and document Australian species'.
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This would also be accurate, but again, it's a less effective message. We want to do this for how long exactly, and what will be the end result? How will we measure progress? Isn't this just special pleading from a sector that's always pleading?
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There seems to be no alternative to the simple and effective message 'we aim to discover and document all remaining Australian species in a generation'. This workshop aims to work out how we could go about at least getting close to this goal.
Prickly flounder, Swan RIver. Photo: John Huisman
Another common response within the taxonomy sector is that we will only be able to achieve this goal wuth a truly massive increase in the number of taxonomists.
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While clearly we do need more taxonomists, we need a mix of increases in resourcing, and smarter ways of doing taxonomy. Business-as-usual will not get us even close to this goal, and it's very unlikely we'll be able to convince the community or government to fund a substantially expanded taxonomy sector if business-as-usual is the best we can offer.
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So this workshop has the key aim to envision how we will achieve this truly ambitious goal, and to think this through in a way that we've never really considered before.
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We need to approach this in the same manner that American physicists approached the Manhattan project or the Apollo moon missions - instead of thinking about all the reasons why it will never work, we need to think instead about all the means by which we can make it work.
