An anonymous donor apparently has withdrawn $225,000 in support of county botanical programs because of concerns about a proposed merger between the L.A. County Natural History Museum and the county Dept. of Arboreta and Botanic Gardens.
County supervisors called a halt to a plan to merge the Department of Arboreta and Botanic Gardens with the county Museum of Natural History because the county's Economy and Efficiency Commission has not made sufficient progress on it and because the board needs to replace recently retired arboreta department head Francis Ching.