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(meteorobs) Meteorite recovery legislation?
Hi Ed,
> Your not going to get much sympathy with your proposal from the
> scientific community or others that are interested in the study
> of meteorites. What Robert and you propose should be considered
> a criminal act and legislation should be put in place to prevent
> this.
Your comments suggest that you don't know the whole story here.
All responsible meteorite "hunters", "discoverers", whatever you
want to call them, make their finds available to the scientific
community. No science is lost -- on the contrary, if it weren't
for the hard work of these people, the scientific community would
have only a fraction of the meteoritic material that they currently
do. The Smithsonian isn't expending the resources to recover
meteorites in the United States -- hunters, prospectors, farmers
and field investigators are. Is it too much to ask that these
individuals should get some reward for their efforts?
The government's actions with respect to the Old Woman meteorite
probably have done them and scientists more harm than good in the
long run. There's no telling how many meteorites sit in private
hands -- unknown and unstudied -- due to the fear of outright confiscation.
In the rare case of unextractable finds, recommending
legislative action to FORCE the transfer of location information
from finder to government is frankly quite absurd, and completely
unenforcable. What you propose would simply encourage people to
lie about find locations (which is valuable information in and of itself),
and would ultimately drive the meteorite recovery
community underground, to the detriment of everyone -- especially
the scientists.
Respectfully,
Rob Matson
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