NOAA 98-R902

Contact:  Roger Griffis              FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                     4/21/98

The Integrated Taxonomic Information System partnership of federal and private institutions has been awarded the prestigious national Hammer Award for successfully completing the first credible database providing easy access to the scientific names of organisms in North America and the adjacent waters. The on-line system also offers information on the origin, distribution and any former names of these organisms. The system will be a powerful new tool in the management, commercial use, trade or control of biological species where accurate identification and consistent use of correct scientific names is essential to doing business.

Vice President Al Gore's Hammer Award was given to the ITIS partner agencies for bringing ITIS from concept to reality. The Hammer Award is the Vice President's special recognition for teams who have made significant contributions toward improving government's service to the American people. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt presented the award at a special ceremony today.

"Species identification is the first step in any management decision, commercial transaction or control action involving biological organisms," said Dr. D. James Baker, administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. "Without consistent use of the most current, standardized scientific names, effective management, trade or control of species by different countries or even different agencies quickly breaks down, with potentially serious financial, legal and public health consequences."

ITIS was created by a unique partnership of federal agencies from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and many non-federal scientific partners from academic institutions, natural history museums, and the private sector. ITIS grew out of efforts by NOAA and other federal agencies that developed and maintained information on taxonomic names for many years.

Six U.S. federal agencies worked together to foster and modernize the system for naming nature's living organisms: the U.S. Geological Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency, NOAA (including the National Marine Fisheries Service and the National Oceanographic Data Center), the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Agricultural Research Service and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.

Each partnering agency has a mission to inventory, monitor, research or manage biological resources. This creates a common need for a vocabulary shared through taxonomy, the science of describing, naming and classifying plants and animals. The taxonomic naming system provides the most fundamental building block for information sharing on biological resources: the scientific name.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet," said Juliet to Romeo in an impassioned speech. But Gary Waggoner, a pragmatic scientist, is quick to point out that not all roses are scented, so the Bard's sentiment was sweeter than his science.

Waggoner, a scientist at the USGS Center for Biological Informatics in Denver, Colo., is one of the leaders of the award-winning ITIS team that has been working on standardizing scientific names for several years. Other leaders were Roy McDiarmid of USGS, Barbara Lamborne and Steve Young with EPA, Scott Peterson and Wendell Oaks from NRCS and Bruce Collette and Linda Stathoplos of NOAA.

The Vice President's National Partnership for Reinventing Government identified ITIS as a program that will contribute to the efficiency and effectiveness of government and its partnerships by reducing the confusion and misinformation that arise when people are unsure what each other is talking about -- or when they don't know that an animal or plant is known by several names. Knowing the other names a species has had allows scientists and managers to find and use information collected under past names that otherwise might be overlooked.

ITIS, says Waggoner, is a grand new tool in the arsenal of environmental research, and for the first time is enabling the scientific community, resource managers, and the general public to have a common vocabulary of species at their fingertips in an online database. "It is a deceptively simple notion," Waggoner said. "All we're aiming for is a unified way of naming the `things' of nature. Good science depends on every party in a discussion getting the message right."

"Having quick access to the correct scientific names is particularly important for managing and protecting marine fisheries and marine protected species because so many of them migrate across state and international borders. Its also critical for rapid response and control of harmful introduced species that are often transported to the U.S. from all over the world in ship ballast water," said NOAA's Dr. Baker. "The scientific names provide the common language for all managers and scientists, no matter where they are."

ITIS is accessible on the Internet/World Wide Web through the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) at http://www.itis.usda.gov/itis.