Annual Report. Academic year 2018/2019

The past year was a wonderful yet challenging one. After a two-month trial run, the museum opened to the public and with almost 200,000 visitors during this past year we have already become the 7^th most visited museum in Israel. These numbers were well above our expectations; clearly Israel needed a natural history museum!

The Marketing, Operations, and Education teams were committed to welcome this influx of visitors and to develop a new and innovative array of rich and varied programs: workshops, conferences, science days, tours around the galleries and the zoo and botanical garden, night at the museum, plays, public lectures and cool parties. We worked hard to convey our science and values in museum activities, and were gratified by the very positive response we got from our visitors, and thrilled with developing partnerships, in particular with the Tel Aviv Yaffo municipality.

Transferring over 5.5 million specimens to the new museum building was challenging, as was reorganizing the specimens in the new storage facilities. With full dedication of the museum’s Collections Managers and Curators, most of the specimens have already been arranged in the new collection halls, where we can now care for them as we should; but it will still take a significant effort to get all our collections in the long term proper storage.

The Collections and Research team is growing in numbers and in scientific strength and has reached organizational maturity. The Groups (Terrestrial Vertebrates, Entomology, Marine & Aquatic, Paleosciences, Herbarium) have matured into full-fledged Museum Sections working in coordination and with team spirit.

The museum collections database underwent a significant change in the past few years, rearranged on a new software platform that enabled the creation of a unified database that would shortly be publicly available through the museum’s website. Until that happens, we continued to send data as requested to colleagues from around the world.

All this was important because hundreds of scientists continued to use our collections for research in the past year, including many colleagues from abroad and graduate students. As a service-oriented institution, we did our best to provide a state-of-the-art research infrastructure for all. Concurrently, the Collections team members continued to record nature assets in areas of their expertise and to promote their taxonomic research and ability to provide crucial services to academia, conservation agencies, agriculture and health authorities, aviation safety, and other missions.

The Open Landscape Institute, HaMaarag and the Israel Center for Aquatic Ecology have moved to the new building and, residing now in close physical proximity on the 5^th floor, their scientific and professional cooperation is strengthening both among them and with the collections team and research laboratories. These synergies are vital; we plan for the museum to form a whole that is greater than its parts. Moreover, we find interactions with our colleagues from the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Israel Nature and Parks Authority and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (Jewish National Fund) through our joint projects both fruitful and scientifically challenging.

The museum hosted several national and international meetings. Dafna Langgut was a member of the organizing committee of the 5^th Annual Israeli Conference on Environmental History and organized a session on The Steinhardt Natural History Museum as an Archive to Environmental Studies; Shai Meiri was a member of the organizing committee of Gekkota Mundi II | An International Conference; Amos Belmaker was a member of the organizing committee of the 11^th Biennial European Bird Curator Meeting; Bella Galil and Menachem Goren organized a workshop Guidelines for the Definition of Deep-Sea Protected Areas within the frame of the Implementation of the MSFD to the Deep Mediterranean Sea multilateral project; Dorothée Huchon organized a Symposium in Honor of Prof. David Wool 86^th Birthday; and Jonathan Belmaker represented the museum on the panel of the 2^nd Conference of the Israel Chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology that was held at the Technion in Haifa. The Israel Taxonomy Initiative supported three taxonomic workshops on insects (Hemiptera), arrow worms (Chaetognatha) and Peracarida crustaceans. HaMaarag conducted two full-day seminars: Ashalim Stream Ecosystem Montoring Program and Evrona Nature Reserve Ecosystem Monitoring Program.

Team building was an important component of the museum’s work in the past year and would continue to be so. The museum team members come from various university units and other organizations, with different areas of expertise and scientific background. Additionally, dozens of new ushers, cashiers and guides were recruited in the past year, and, of course, we shared our building and treasures with a tremendous number of visitors. Thus, we all have to learn to accommodate each other’s needs in the joint building.

The greatest challenge facing humankind in the 21^st century is the need to provide for a rapidly growing global population, while protecting ecosystems upon which we are all dependent. As a national research infrastructure, the key mission of our museum is to record nature, to study it, and to share our knowledge and expertise with decision-makers and the general public. We feel that the State of Israel and Tel Aviv University have entrusted us with a great treasure, one that is timely, of huge scientific interest, of great societal value, and of immense public interest. We are indeed privileged.