Environmental Specimen Banking in Finland

General
Environmental Specimen Banking (ESB) is defined as arrangement for long-term storing of the specimens of flora and fauna or their parts and tissues. The specimens are mostly stored in freeze at -25 to -80 C, but also as dry material or in ethanol.

There is no separate ESB -programme or cenralised ESB in Finland. All ESB -activities are strongly connected with institutional research and monitoring programmes especially running for environmental contamination and pollution. Flora and fauna samples in the ESBs can be used as reference material for future needs, eg. when studying occurrence and effects of "today" unknown substances in the environment (retrospective studies). A good example are so called endocrine (hormone) distrupters. These are a group of known and unknown industrial pollutants affecting reproduction of fish, birds and mammals. The workshop in UK 1996 on the endocrine distrupters (EUR 17549) was stressed that there is a call for the establishment of National Specimen Banks and better use of existing database. A common database over the European ESBs would be very important for planning and implementing retrospective studies on occurrence and effects of chemical distrupters in the European ecosystems.

The stored specimens eg. mussels, fish, moths, red woodants and shrews are used for development of more accurate analysing methods in Finland. Some of the species are studied by measuring degree of morphological asymmetries and melanism, which can be related to levels of contamination in the organisms. Heavy metal pollution into natural environment have been shown to cause bone asymmetries in common shrew (Pankakoski et. al. 1992. Ann.Zool.Fennica 191:137-144).

Institutes with ESB -activities
The main Finnish research institutes and museums with ESB -activities are listed below.

Institute:	Main samples:
Finnish Environment Institute (FEI)	pike, herring, mussels, red woodants, common shrew, moose
Forestry Research Institute (FRI)	lichen, mosses, litterfal, bark
Game and Fishery Research Institute (GFRI)	reindeer, moose, lynx, wolf, mink, salmon, seal
Finnish Museum of Natural History (FMNH) and Botanical Museum	birds, otter, mosses, fungi, algae
Zoological Museum, Oulu University (ZM/OU)	lynx, wolverine, wolf
University of Turku/Archipelago Research Institute	herring
West Finland Regional Environment Centre (WEC)	sea-eagle/eggs

The research institutes, FEI and FRI, were informed to collect systematically biological samples for ESB -purposes. FEI has collected aquatic organisms from 1970s and FRI owns very large collections of mosses, lichen, litterfal and bark from 1950s.

Other Institutes were declared that these are stored flora and fauna specimens for different time period depending on duration of on-going projects. The ESB-activities were mostly connected with research activities. The institutes don't have any official ESB -plans for long-term storing of annually or sporadically received samples. The Museums are receiving, preparing and storing quite much of certain rare mammals (wolverine, wolf, lynx, brown bear, otter), which are classified as State property. The bodies of the mammals if killed, trapped or found dead, must be handed and delivered to the government agencies and finally to Museums.These samples are earmarked as very valuable ones and must be saved and stored into more permanent ESBs in Finland.

Development plans for 1998-2000
Development of ESB in Finland is stated in a new report on "Environmental Monitoring Strategy" published by the Ministry of Environment in 1997. According to the statement there are some main plans to be fulfilled during the period of 1998 to 2000.

1. The authorities working with national monitoring would make a common cooperation plan on how to arrange ESB -system in Finland.

2. An ad hoc Expert Group between institutes and museums will be established to clarify the status of annually or sporadically collected specimens and to evaluate the needs of specimens for more permanent long-term storing into ESBs. The expert group should make decisions on best-fitted storing methods for the species of special interest which are polar fox, brown bear, wolf, lynx, wolverine, otter, ringed seal and eagles.

3. The expert group will also make decisions on accessing the samples for different users, projects and research programs (formal policy). Finland's exotic flora and fauna locating in the periphery of Europe can be classified as reference material eg. for evaluation of occurrence and effects of long-range transported contaminants into northern latitudes. International research projects can have an interest for the ESB samples of Northern origin.

4. FEI will set up a common national database including all information on the ESB -specimens, their quality and quantity, and locations in different institutes and museums. This data is also available for the common Nordic and EU -projects dealing with ESB -development.

Standards and guidelines for ESB
At present there are no national (SFS) standard methods for collecting, preparing and/or storing biological specimens for purposes of ESB in Finland. The methods are quite different depending on monitoring programmes, projects, scientists and institutes which results in diverse collection of specimens. The Nordic working group on ESB was prepared and published a manual of the methods in use in the Nordic countries and Greenland. The manual summarizes quite well the diversity of methods for monitoring programmes (Nordic ESB Group 1995).

In the near future there are no governmental plans that a separate ESB programme will be started.

However, standardisation of methods are under development. For instance, a national SFS standard method for collecting and preparing of biotic samples for chemical analyses and ESB -purposes will be written for remiss in 1999.

For further information please contact:
Mr. Juha-Pekka Hirvi,
research scientist, project manager
ecotoxicological research and monitoring, specimen banking

Finnish Environment Institute
Research Laboratory
Hakuninmaantie 4-6
FIN-00430 Helsinki
Tel. +358 9 403 00882
Fax. +358 9 403 00880
GSM. +358 (0)50 300 8251
E-mail: juha-pekka.hirvi@vyh.fi