Background information

 

The Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum (HKBM), located within the School of Biological Sciences, is the first museum dedicated to the study and education of biodiversity, and presents over 13,000 specimens for visitors to enjoy.

 

Through free admission, the HKBM allows the general public to come and learn about the diversity of the organisms that surround us and others more unfamiliar. Since our opening last May, we have been overjoyed by the enthusiasm and interest of the public to come visiting the museum and we work to make your experience an unforgettable experience.

 

Before you come for your first visit, or come again visiting the HKBM, let us tell you a bit more about the history of our collection. Due to a lack of archives or pre-existing database before our recent work starting from 2015, the history of numerous specimens that compose our collection remains uncertain. We do know though, that several of our specimens, in particular the birds, mammals and other vertebrates, were prepared in the 1940’s to 70’s, and thus have in addition to a biological importance, also an historical one.

 

Unfortunately, some specimens have had a bit of a bumpy ride before reaching us (see pictures below); and hence, require special attention and restoration before becoming a part of our exhibits.

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In order to improve the unique experience offered by the HKBM into the incredible and fascinating diversity of organisms found in Hong Kong and globally, we are counting on your help to:

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1. Restore damaged specimens to expand the collection for education, conservation study and research

2. Develop educational programmes for the community, including expanding guided tours to schools, NGOs and to offer more opportunities to the public to visit the museum

3. Promote awareness of the community in protecting the biodiversity in Hong Kong

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Play a role in fixing these beautiful, but broken specimens for your future enjoyment!

(DONATE NOW)

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Museum’s Functioning

Currently, two positions - a Curator Manager and an Educational Manager, are supported for some time, allowing us to work on a number of tasks related to our specimens’ collection and to organise tours twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

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To develop new projects and activities, the museum relies mainly on the generosity of donors to help us grow and to support our outreach programmes. Hence, we are introducing this new fund-raising initiative that is of utmost importance to us, and we hope for you as well.

 

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Fund-raising Initiative

Specimens’ restoration

This is where you can all play a role in supporting this campaign, allowing us to fix these beautiful, but broken, specimens, for your future enjoyment. We focus specifically on 10 large and astonishing specimens, which include:

 

• A badger, a monitor lizard, a chevrotain, a short-beaked echidna, a pangolin, a porcupine, a Chinese muntjac, a Chinese giant salamander, and a green sea turtle!

• Additionally, we also have many other smaller specimens which are in a very chaotic condition and which require delicate and attentive work to be fixed. We like to call it our army of skeletons.

 

The costs of fixing these specimens depend on their size, the types of broken body parts, their preservation status and the work needed. Here, we determined a progressive scale of costs which, thanks to your generosity, will allow us to fix those specimens. Ultimately, we hope to be able to fix all of them so they could then be displayed into the HKBM.

 

Increasing our visitors’ capacity

Our team includes only two full-time staff to curate the collection and organize the visits (among many other tasks). To respond to your demands of visiting the museum, we thus would love to offer more opening days, such as Sundays for the public, and also extra days during the week for school and group visits. To be able to do so, we would like to grow our team so a new guide could help in organizing more visits. We thus count on your generosity to allow more people to visit the museum, and more often!

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Stages of fund-raising campaign

The figure below introduces the different steps and fund-raising stages that we will need to complete both of our objectives fully. We hope that thanks to your help we will be able to reach these amazing goals to welcome you in the best conditions!