The “natural” stores of data, being the local flora and fauna, were being lost to development. The project of preserving a record of California’s wildlife, as well as type of analysis Grinnell was attempting to undertake, would require droves of meticulously prepared specimen. The labor-intensive process of trapping, recording, transporting, and preserving specimens required a considerably large and diverse labor force. Decomposition presented itself as a formidable enemy to recording and preserving this data.
