KUCHING, June 28- The Sarawak Museum yesterday received a plaque of British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace’s (photo) portrait from the Natural History Museum in London, United Kingdom and Wallace Memorial Fund as part of his significant legacy in Sarawak’s history.
Jason Brooke from the Brooke Heritage Fund handed over the plaque to Sarawak Museum natural history curator Dr Charles Leh Moi Ung in conjunction with the forthcoming second international conference on Wallace, who had spent two years in Sarawak, including Santubong and Simunjan, at the invitation of Rajah James Brooke in November 1854.
The Wallace 2013 conference to be held here, on Nov 7-8, will also mark the centenary of Wallace’s death at age 90, having been recognised as the co-founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection together with Charles Dawin.
Brooke, 28, whose grandfather Anthony Brooke was the former Rajah Muda during the Brooke era, said a team of researchers from the British Natural History Museum would also be helping the Sarawak Museum to set up the Wallace corner, expected to be opened by this year.
“The conference is a great initiative to encourage people to come here for research and just enjoy the outdoors at Gunung Santubong, where a lot of Wallace’s letters now referred to as ‘the Sarawak Law’ are discovered by the museum and are an important source of record,” he told reporters after the handing over ceremony here.
He said there has been great appreciation of Wallace’s role during that period while in Sarawak, especially at Gunung Serambu near here, a Wallace collection locality.
Wallace also explored the Malay Archipelago from 1854 to 1862 and later published his famous book ‘The Malay Archipelago.’
Meanwhile, Dr Leh said the conference aims to bring together historians, natural scientists, ecologists, zoologists, botanists, paleontologists, anthropologists, geologists, park managers and other scholars of natural sciences to share their experiences on ecology, evolution and resource management of the region.
He said the co-organisers – Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas), Sarawak Museum Department and Sarawak Forestry – were negotiating with the Archives of Natural History (Edinburgh University) and Biodiversity and Conservation (Springer Journal) for publication of relevant papers from the conference.
– BERNAMA
