Museum celebrates a decade of growth

Museum Information

What: Las Vegas Natural History Museum

When: 9 a.m.-4 p.m. daily.

Where: 900 Las Vegas Blvd. North.

Admission: $5.50 for adults; $4.50 for seniors, students age 13 and older and military; $3 for children 4-12; children under three and museum members, free.

Information: 384-3466.

The tiny Las Vegas Museum of Natural History, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year, is on the verge of a big growth spurt.

"We have run out of space," Director Marilyn Gillespie said. "We are looking at doubling in size."

The 35,000-square-foot building on Las Vegas Boulevard North is bursting at the seams with hundreds of stuffed animals and other exhibits.

Because of the cramped quarters, Gillespie said the museum must be a little more selective in the animals it accepts from benefactors.

She said a five-year plan for growth is being created. She doesn't know how much money will have to be raised to increase the size of the existing building, but she says it might be about $10 million.

"We're working with an architect right now so that we will know exactly what direction we want to go, how big to make it," Gillespie said. "We're working with a consultant to make sure we don't make it too big. We don't want to have struggled to make it work for 10 years and then expand it so big the community won't support it."

Gillespie said the Las Vegas Natural History Museum is a little unnatural in the way it was created and in how it survives.

"We are a museum that started 10 years ago, literally with nothing," Gillespie said.

She said when she moved to Las Vegas from New Mexico about 12 years ago she did volunteer work for the now-defunct Las Vegas Museum of Natural History, which was on the Strip across from the Aladdin.

"This was before the children's museum, before the county museum," Gillespie said. "All I could think of was what a terrible shame that this community didn't have access to those kinds of things.

"Granted, we have the Mirage, MGM (which boast wildlife habitats) and all that. But those things aren't real affordable. And the Mandalay Bay aquarium is wonderful, but in my opinion a child shouldn't have to go to a casino to see these things."

Gillespie said soon after volunteering to work for the museum on the Strip she was hired to work there full time. Then the museum owners filed for bankruptcy.

Concerned that Las Vegas would be without a natural history museum, Gillespie said she asked the city for help and was given the building it now occupies.

"They don't give us money to operate," Gillespie noted, "and it's real difficult to compete in this market. We can't set off a million dollars worth of fireworks, and Michael Jackson doesn't usually make it to our openings."

The museum relies a lot on corporate and private donations to cover the expense of operating the facility, which has an annual budget of about $500,000.

"Our admission charge doesn't even (cover) enough to make the payroll," she said. "Most (natural history) museums receive public support."

When the museum first opened it didn't own any exhibits. Gillespie said for the first five years it had the loan of a private collection of animals.

"After five years the gentleman who loaned us the collection wanted it back," she said.

In the meantime Gillespie had been networking with big-game hunters and other sources and had become acquainted with Bruno Scherrer, a Southern California businessman and a member of Safari Club International.

Scheerer, who visits Las Vegas several times a year, had been looking for a place to put a $3 million collection of animals he had hunted over a period of years.

"The bulk of the animals here came from Bruno Scherrer," Gillespie said. "He has given up big game hunting."

Hunting for stuffed animals

Most of the animals at the museum were donated, such as a polar bear that came from Hawaii two months ago.

Actually, Hawaii was merely the bear's last address. It has been all over the country with the man who hunted it on an ice pack in the Bering Strait, somewhere between Alaska and Russia, about 25 years ago.

"I probably was in Russia," said Hawaii resident George Isaacs, who donated the animal to the museum.

Isaacs is an international developer who has bought and sold farmland and other property from Elko to the Amazon Basin in South America to Tanzania in Africa. He spoke by phone from his home in Honolulu.

"I've lived all around the world," Isaacs, a former big game hunter, said. "Somebody called me one day (about hunting polar bears in Alaska). I didn't know if I wanted to go up. I didn't think it would be exciting."

The area where he hunted, west of the city of Kotzebue, was a breeding ground for the bears.

"I saw about 900 bears in three days," he said.

Isaacs shot a male bear and had him stuffed.

"I've had it at various places I've lived, a ranch in California, a place in Idaho," Isaacs said.

He said Gillespie persuaded him to donate the bear to the museum.

"She is a very enthused person," Isaacs said.

Isaacs said he first met Gillespie three or four years ago. After the first meeting he donated a stuffed lion, on the back of a stuffed wildebeest, to the museum. The scene stands inside the entry to a room filled with buffaloes, brown bears, deer, monkeys and dozens of other stuffed animals.

Educational resource

Gillespie said most natural history museums acquire their collections from hunters.

"Sometimes there are road kills, if an animal can be found soon enough and can be preserved," she said. "A couple here are zoo animals. We never send people out to kill animals for our collection."

Gillespie said occasionally she is confronted by animal rights activists when she has a booth at a fair or some other venue, but there has never been a problem at the museum.

"Our message is a conservation message," she said, noting that more than 28,000 children a year are able to see animals at the museum they would otherwise not have the opportunity to see.

Gillespie said that even though the animals have been hunted and killed, she is grateful that hunters donate the animals to natural history museums.

"Thank goodness they are sharing with us," she said. "In a zoo, the animals are very far from the fence so you don't really get to see the animal.

"I've been very fortunate in that I've gotten to go to Africa a couple of times and seen some of the animals close up. But most people won't ever get to go to Africa."

She said the museum enhances the education of students and is important for the survival of the animals that are still alive.

"We are raising a generation of children that is out of touch with nature," Gillespie said. "This is an educational resource. The children need it."

Gillespie said the museum has grown steadily despite the fact that about "75 percent of the people in this community do not know we exist. Even though the community doesn't know we're here, the students do."

Part of the problem, she said, is that museums and other cultural attractions in Las Vegas are overshadowed by other events.

"When you go to Albuquerque (N.M.) there are five things to do, and the museum is one of them," Gillespie said. "But in Las Vegas there are dozens and dozens of things to do, and the museum isn't one of them."

Unless it's the Liberace Museum.

About 70,000 people visit the Las Vegas Natural History Museum, compared to the 200,000 who visit the Liberace Museum -- a museum of unnatural history.

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