SAVING OUR HERITAGE - PEST MANAGEMENT IN MUSEUMS AND HISTORIC HOUSES

摘要

Over the last ten years, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) has been adopted by many museums, archives and historic houses and has achieved considerable success. In the past, there was widespread use of many toxic or persistent materi-als such as arsenic and mercuric chloride and DDT to prevent textiles and natural history specimens from being destroyed by pests. Most of the ethnographic material collected by Captain Cook and the natural history specimens collected by Charles Darwin are still in our museums thanks to the preventive measures taken. However, many treasures have been lost over the years to pests such as carpet beetle {Anthrenus sp), clothes moth {Tineola bisselliella) (Figure 1) and furniture beetle (Anobium punctatum). Sadly, pesticides did not prevent the destruction in the 19th Century of the unique dodo specimen in the Oxford Museum. To preserve collections, conservators and other museum staff have worked to develop alternative strategies for preventing and controlling pests (Rossol & Jessop 1996; Florian 1997; Pinniger 2001). The IPM strategies based on detection and prevention of pests have been successful in many small and large museums, museum stores, historic houses, galleries, libraries and archives world-wide.