New WA Museum centre honours Harry Butler

A research facility that will house millions of specimens while the new $428 million Western Australian museum is built has been named after the late Harry Butler.

Culture and Arts Minister John Day said it was not well known that the naturalist had decades of association with the museum, including fieldwork collecting and providing financial support.

The new $17.6 million research facility at the WA Museum's existing Welshpool collections centre contains about 2.5 million alcohol-preserved specimens, including many collected by Dr Butler and others named after him such as the highly venomous spotted mulga snake, Pseudechis butleri.

Dr Butler was best known for his ABC TV show In the Wild, which was broadcast from 1976 to 1981, but was also an environmental consultant, notably working with energy giant Chevron on Barrow Island, where the company produced oil before developing the massive Gorgon LNG project.

Dr Butler died in December following a battle with cancer, aged 85.

The new WA Museum is scheduled to open in 2020, with the old building closing its doors in June.