Losing biodiversity information

I learned on Tuesday that the National Biodiversity Information Infrastructure (NBII) will be taken offline in January.

January 15, 2012, will see the end of a long-term project to empower users of biological resources data and information. The National Biological Information Infrastructure, or NBII, was begun in 1994 within what was then the National Biological Service (NBS) of the Department of the Interior. Its purpose and mission were to ensure that scientists, resource managers, decision makers, and concerned citizens could go to a single place on the Web and find biological resources data and information from vetted sources--whether in government, academia, non-governmental organizations, or the private sector. (source)

I was very sorry to learn the news. I am not a heavy user of NBII data, but I know that many others are. It has been a vital resource for many as a gateway to data maintained by federal, state, and local governmental agencies and by non-governmental organizations. Those who manage our nations forests, grasslands, and waterways will now have an even more difficult task. An important part of the data on which wise decisions depend will no longer be available to them.

What have we done to ourselves? We will be flying with blinders.