[Taxacom] progressive permitting regimes

[Doug Yanega]

Fred Schueler wrote:

>We'd like to propose that restrictions on possession and transportation
>not be imposed on organisms preserved as scientific specimens, so long
>as date and locality data are in the containers with the specimens, and
>that a priori permitting not be required for taking numbers of specimens
>which would have no significant impact on native populations of the
>organisms, so long as the collections are reported to the agency before
>the end of the calendar year (these are not organisms for which there's
>any known threat of undue human exploitation).

Since I'm leaving town for a week imminently, my comment here is sort 
of a "drive-by" for which I'm not likely to be able to carry on an 
exchange. My personal view is that rather than basing everything on 
the organisms being collected, and limiting everything to a tiny 
geographic jurisdiction, that certifications be issued to individual 
researchers, and that this certification grants broad privileges (in 
both time and space) regarding collection and transportation of 
specimens (e.g., you are allowed to collect in ANY National Park, 
State Park, etc. - and you can carry your specimens on an airplane). 
If the criteria for certification are stringent enough (including 
review of your application by actual biologists), and if there are 
explicit conditions which - if violated - make you LOSE your 
certification (e.g., selling specimens commercially), this could 
drastically reduce the paperwork for every person and every agency 
that deals with these matters regularly. Imagine if all you had to do 
was drive up to a National Park entrance, show them your Certified 
Field Biologist ID card, give them a minute to look you up in the 
system, and get waved on through. THAT is what I would call a 
"progressive permitting regime" - skip the permits altogether.

Naturally, this is a pipedream, but ANY intelligent, efficient, or 
logical improvement to the present system (at least in the US) is a 
pipedream - it will only get worse and worse and worse. We are, after 
all, talking about agencies who will arrest you for running a UV bulb 
and catching a handful of insects at it, while ignoring a camper 10 
yards away running a bugzapper that kills thousands of the exact same 
insects. There isn't even any *attempt* - as a matter of *policy* - 
to be cooperative or accommodating to the scientific community; it 
tends to devolve to the choices of individual agents whether or not 
to be helpful (often in violation of the rules) or hostile (as the 
rules dictate). What is needed is for scientific authority to *trump* 
local authority, like waving an FBI badge at a crime scene. Fat 
chance of THAT ever happening.

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82