Physical Specimen Collection and Curation

The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (District) proposes to establish a Physical Specimen Collection and Curations component of the District’s Inventory and Monitoring Program (Program). The Specimen Collection and Curation component supports the overarching goal of the Program to systematically document natural resources on District lands and provide reliable scientific information that supports resource protection, management, planning, and adaptive management. Specimens would be collected by District staff or by individuals authorized through a Direct Permit (authorized collectors), and would be collected only for inventory, monitoring, research, or educational activities. Specimens would be collected consistent with the District’s Standard Operating Procedures for Physical Specimen Collection and Curation[JM2.1][MC2.2][JM2.3] in a manner that minimizes impacts to species and habitats; and curated as traceable, verifiable reference materials that support repeatable identification and long-term monitoring, resource inventory, and long-term data integrity. Authorized collectors would not collect when doing so would reasonably be expected to cause undue harm to a local population, individual organism, or the surrounding environment. Collection activities would also avoid unnecessary disturbance to soils, water, vegetation, wildlife, and habitat features, including sensitive substrates and microhabitats. All specimen collection conducted under the Program would comply with applicable Federal, State, and local requirements, including any permits or permissions required for collection, possession, transport, and curation. Specimen categories proposed for collection include: • Plants: Authorized collectors would collect voucher specimens of vascular and non-vascular plants, limited to one primary voucher per taxon, occurrence, and collection event. • Fungal: Authorized collectors would collect the full fruiting body or other diagnostic fungal material present at the time of collection, limited to the minimum number of fruiting bodies and amount of associated substrate necessary for identification and curation. • Invertebrate: Authorized collectors would collect voucher specimens of insects and other terrestrial or aquatic invertebrate taxa, limited to a small representative number sufficient for identification, verification, and approved reference needs. • Vertebrate and paleontological: Authorized collectors would generally rely on non-collection methods (e.g., observations, photographs, remote cameras, acoustic recordings) rather than physical specimen collection. Except where capture or collection of live vertebrates is explicitly permitted and authorized, physical specimens of modern vertebrates would be collected only for approved objectives and only from non-living, naturally shed, abandoned, or deceased material in a manner that avoids disturbance or harm to live animals.