Re: Paleobotanical Legislation (posted for E. Rose)

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From: erich@esinter.com (Erich Rose)
Subject: Re: Paleobotanical Legislation (posted for D. Erwin)
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 12:37:24 +0100
Status: O

Thanks Doug for replying to my letter,

A few points...

>The American Museum of Natural History in New York is  a privately-run
>organization managed by a Board of Trustees and recieves no direct
>federal support for running the museum.

The American Museum of Natural History gets part of it's funding(?%) from
the City of New York where I live and pay taxes.

Most institutions recieve some money in the form of research grants or
awards and some of that money comes from "our" government. The general
publics attitude  about educational and scientific funding is always going
to have an impact on how much the congress alots. And these days the sound
of axes swinging has been replaced by chainsaws roaring.

>  For those concerned with the bill, the best thing to do is become as
>informed about the issues as possible, then find out which staff member
>for your representatives and senators would be handling the issue. Call
>or write them and let them know how you feel.
>
>The more you know about the ACTUAL bill (as opposed to rumors about the
>bill), >the more effective you are likely to be.

Yeah that's the best way to get through. Excellent suggestion. But...

Please don't confuse what I was saying about "ideas(?=rumours)" that are
being suggested versus actual legislation being presented. The current
legislation as I have seen is only restrictive of vertebrate fossils on
government owned or controlled land and in many ways doesn't change things
much for us amateurs since we were not supposed to be collecting bones
there anyway. Commercial collectors have their own concerns and the
legitimate ones should be working hard to bear pressure on the shady ones.

What I am trying to get at is more of an awareness of how important it is
for us as individuals to deal with this problem on all levels, starting
with unscrupulous fellow amateurs and working our way up through shady
dealers, technocratic academians, etc...

E.Rose