On July 1st, 1972, Ronald E. Cole was hired as the first Curator, and his first accession of 259 mammal specimens founded the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology. From then through 2000, Cole and several key intern and graduate students developed a collection that surpassed its initial charge of support for laboratory classes in the biology and taxonomy of birds, fish, and mammals. As the collections grew, the Museum’s reputation for specimen quality spread, fostering specimen exchanges with other museums and campuses.
Ronald E. Cole, founding Curator of the MWFB, on expedition in Papua New Guinea in 1985.
At the same time, faculty and graduate students were encouraged to collect and deposit voucher specimens with the Museum. Consequently, in over just 30 years, the Museum had accumulated a nearly complete collection of California vertebrates, and in particular North American waterfowl. The waterfowl collection, through the efforts of Cole, Dr. Dennis Raveling and students, remains one of our primary strengths. Another principal area of significance has been the continued growth of our Pacific seabird collection: the MWFB holds specimens from the collections of Larry Spear, whose research on gull distribution and plumage yielded one of the most complete known-age collections of large gulls in the United States; his collection was donated to the MWFB in the late 1980's. Building on initial efforts in California, Cole launched collecting expeditions to Mexico and abroad (New Guinea, Australia). Our fish collection was spawned as a direct result of Dr. Peter B. Moyle’s (and graduate students’) research. Moyle started collecting fish for the MWFB in 1972 and developed the collection to assist in teaching and to forward the completion of his classic text, Inland Fishes of California (2002). Their efforts ensured that the MWFB housed a near complete collection of freshwater fishes of California.
In addition to internal expansion, the MWFB benefited from the acquisition of five orphaned collections. In the early 1990's, the historic UC Davis Department of Zoology (now the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Biodiversity) bird and mammal collection was transferred to the MWFB. Acquiring this material (6,131 specimens) immediately provided a historical perspective to the MWFB’s more contemporary inventory of California vertebrates, as most specimens from Zoology dated from the 1920s through the early 1970s. The majority of these acquisitions derived from riverine systems of the Central Valley and its watersheds, now altered by subsequent hydro-electric projects. The specimens were accompanied by catalogs and journals, which together are an irreplaceable and significant contribution from notable zoologists including: John T. Emlen, Jr., Tracy Storer, E. W. Jameson, Jr., and Robert L. Rudd. The Zoology collection also housed synoptic series of birds and mammals from Malaysia and Panama.
Also in the early 1990s, the MWFB acquired bird and mammal collections from UC Irvine and Mills College (Oakland, CA), both of which were orphaned. The UC Irvine collection was rescued from a storage facility and consisted of several thousand specimens from mostly Orange, Riverside, and Los Angeles Counties of California. Most of these specimens were obtained prior to the rampant development of the Los Angeles Basin. The Mills College collection, although small (about 500 specimens), represented the assembly of materials by noted California ornithologist Howard L. Cogswell, some of which date back to the late 1880s. In the late 1990s, the Point Reyes Bird Observatory (PRBO) donated their synoptic collection of over 600 skeletal specimens of oceanic birds from the Pacific Rim, including Antarctica, New Zealand, and the North Pacific to the MWFB. This donation greatly enhanced our growing avian osteological holdings.
Curator Andy Engilis, Jr. working on a California Condor specimen in the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology specimen preparation laboratory
In 2000, Ron Cole retired and was succeeded by Andrew Engilis, Jr. as Curator. Since 2000, Engilis has expanded upon the foundation laid by Cole and diversified and established programmatic growth in areas of research and collections. This included expanding teaching support and K-12 outreach efforts. As a result, use of our collections by faculty, off-campus researchers, educators, students, and agency professionals has increased. In 2004, Engilis developed a mission statement which served to focus museum growth and paved the way for facility and research-related grants. Key among these were two collection grants from the National Science Foundation, awarded in 2005 and 2008. These grants improved and expanded collection curation and database development, as well as initiated a barcode system for our liquid preserved specimens. They also allowed the museum to hire a dedicated collections manager, an important step towards increased use of the collection by educators and researchers. In 2004, Irene E. Torres was hired to take on the collection management duties in the museum.
In 2005, Engilis moved to develop a multi-dimensional museum for the 21st Century. Through several grants, some long-term, the museum diversified its programs to include biological monitoring, international and domestic specimen collecting, and long-term biomonitoring in California. The MWFB developed multifaceted US-focused research programs including vertebrate surveys in California, Eastern Washington, New Mexico, and Texas; ecological studies in California; long-term biomonitoring on Putah Creek, California; and endangered species recovery in the Hawaiian Islands. These programs provided the framework for developing areas of expertise in zoological sampling methods, ecological modeling, systematics, and graduate and undergraduate studies. Collection growth during this period was rapid due to the focused nature of our biomonitoring programs.
Post 2000, Dr. Peter Moyle and his students continued to develop the fish collection through re-sampling efforts of California’s inland fishes. Moyle also secured specimens from other parts of the Western United States and one significant collection of Sri Lankan freshwater fishes. Patrick Crane served as Moyle’s lab manger and helped collect and curate fish. He assisted with collections management and transition of the fish collection to the MWFB in 2004. In 2011, our fish holdings nearly doubled in size with the addition of the San Jose State University fish collection. This important collection started in the 1950s. The addition of this collection dove-tailed into our inland fish specialization by adding many of California’s marine and estuarine fishes. In 2015, California drought surveys further added additional specimens from many of California’s inland watersheds to our collection.
The mammal collection greatly expanded with the leadership of small mammal ecologist, Dr. Douglas A. Kelt. Working from the base collection developed by Cole and early mammalogist Dr. Robert Schwab, Kelt and his students worked closely with the museum to further expand our mammal collections of the Western United States. Between 2005 and 2008, Kelt coordinated collecting efforts in Chile, which yielded significant modern specimens of mammals. Another major addition to our holdings was the donation of Dr. Peter Meserve’s collection of small mammals in 2011. Meserve had amassed over 1,200 specimens, primarily of Chilean species, which augmented our recent collections from that country. One other major donation to our mammal collection occurred in 2009, when Dr. Albert Beck gifted over 900 Southeast Asian bats. Dr. Beck was an ectoparasitologist affiliated with the Bohart Museum of Entomology. His collection of bats from Malaysia from the late 1960s was expertly prepared and cataloged, and added many new species and families that expanded geographic coverage of our collection. They were also foundational to our Southeast Asian fieldwork, which started in 2009.
Since 2000, the bird holdings have nearly tripled in size, primarily due to the research efforts and guidance of our current curator. In 2005, the MWFB acquired the rare bird holdings of the American River College teaching collection. This resulted in a transfer of about 200 birds representing specimens from private collectors that dated back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. Starting with expanding trades with museums from around the United States, Engilis began, in 2005, a coordinated campaign to collect birds in various regions of the US as part of a re-survey effort. Working closely with staff of the Smithsonian Bird Division, both museums focused efforts on the US border of Mexico and Canada, as well as California, Maryland, and Virginia. Engilis’s own research in Hawaii has allowed us to develop an outstanding collection of birds from the Hawaiian Islands. In 2017, the Museum began its specimen-based inventory of the birds of the Sacramento Valley.
Acquisition of the historic UC Davis Zoology herpetofaunal collection was completed in 2013. This added the last classes of vertebrates to the MWFB holdings with 4,300 specimens of reptiles and amphibians. With a strength in California, the collection's highlight is historic amphibians collected in the 1920s by Tracy I. Storer. The MWFB's recent research efforts in Southeast Asia have increased our holdings of herpetofauna from Sulawesi and Cambodia. We have also increased our representation of species from the Southwestern United States.
With all this activity the MWFB pushed for certifications to expand on professional services to users. The MWFB became accredited by the American Society of Mammalogists in 2012. It became a registered CITES Institution in 2011 and has maintained a USDA Biosafety Level 2 Lab certification since 2010. We have been an official California state repository for vertebrates since 2010.
The remainder of the 2010s saw increased growth of the MWFB's international research programs with multiple projects in Southeast Asia, including biodiversity explorations in Sulawesi, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and mapping human-mammal disease vectors in Cambodia. We are currently expanding Asian work to Laos, Vietnam, and Kazakhstan. Our SE Asia work has already yielded several thousand specimens and is continuing to grow.
Today, the MWFB remains the chief facility in the Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology for coordinating student internships, outreach, off-campus education, training, and wildlife media relations. Over the years, the MWFB has supported over 50 different courses on campus and annually supports 17 courses in 14 different departments across three colleges and two professional schools on campus (involving 2,700 students annually). The MWFB’s increased level of activity and diverse programs during the past twenty years, including collection development, expanded teaching and research, undergraduate experiential learning programs, and outreach, has attracted attention from the international museum community, university administrators, and private donors. As a result, the MWFB is entering the next important stage of its evolution. We have set goals to secure an endowment for the museum to help support management, expand experiential learning opportunities for undergraduate students, and are pursuing funding for a new facility to house collections and new teaching space. The new facility will also provide exhibit halls for the general public. To learn more, please visit our Give page.
