US public-lands bill includes fossil regulations - March 31, 2009
Posted on behalf of Rex Dalton and Roberta Kwok
After nearly 20 years, US scientists have won approval for a law that seeks to protect vertebrate fossils found on federal lands. The US Vertebrate Paleontological Resources Preservation Act was included in omnibus land management legislation signed into law on 30 March by President Barack Obama.
The bill means a permit is needed to collect any scientifically significant vertebrate fossil, officials say. But it would allow ‘casual collecting’ of common fossils. Details of how the law will be applied are yet to be finalized. Officials at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology have pushed for the legislation because of the widespread practice of commercial collecting, where important specimens may be sold and not recorded in the scientific literature.
Among its hodge-podge of other items the bill also designates about 800,000 hectares of land as wilderness, preventing oil and gas development in those areas, and protects more than 1,600 kilometres of rivers. It establishes a new national monument in New Mexico's Robledo Mountains, where 280-million-year-old animal footprints have been found.
A significant chunk of the bill is dedicated to marine research, including initiatives for ocean exploration, ocean and coastal mapping, observing systems, and ocean acidification research and monitoring.
True to the catch-all nature of such 'omnibus' legislation it also, through the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act, gives authority to the National Institutes of Health to coordinate paralysis research.
Comments
The bill prohibits collecting of ANY vertebrate fossils on federal land, including sharks teeth. Penalties include 5 years in prison. Commercial collectors do not collect on federal land in the US anyway and this bill does not change that. What is does do is make every kid who picks up a scrap of fossil a potential felon. You can get a gravel permit and grind up the fossils as road base or just sit and watch them erode away to dust. There was no opportunity for commericial professional collectors to even have input into the wording of the bill as they were excluded from the discussions. This bill could have been written to benefit fossils in the US, but instead "scientifically significant" fossils on federal land will be lost to science forever due to the opinions of just a few who pressed this bill through even though it has been unable to stand on its own merit for over 15 years. Commercial professional collectors aren't the bad guys. Museums are their biggest customers, so "scientifically significant" specimens almost always end up in public repositories. The field of paleontology was based on the finds of commercial and amateur collectors. Your own Mary Anning is a perfect example. Erosion and ignorance are the enemy.
Posted by: Tracie Bennitt | April 3, 2009 12:44 AM