On Wed, 8 Apr 1998 14:27:34 -0300, Paulo da Cunha Lana wrote:
>I have an important reminder to all of you who will attend the Brazilian
>conference. If you are not a Brazilian citizen and plan to collect worms
>or other animals and eventually take them back to your native country, it
>will be necessary to get an special collecting permit from the Brazilian
>Ministry for the Environment. The Brazilian government has taken a zero
>tolerance for illegal traffic of biological specimens ....
Surely, collecting some small worms on the shore may reveal by far more
harmful to the country concerned, and to mankind as a whole, than
destroying the Amazonian rain forest. - Unfortunately this worldwide
bureaucratic business of lobbying braindeficient armchairfarters (for
German and Polish readers: Sesselfurzer, pierdzistolki) in the ministries,
worldwide, causes more and more troubles to elementary natural history
activities, as simple as counting segments and chetae in polychaetes.
Dear Organizer of the meeting (which unfortunately I cannot attend),
and other polychaete-workers:
I would have stories to tell about the grotesque absurdities to the
highest degree that are caused by, for example, indiscriminate CITES
regulations followed to the letter by armchairfarters in various countries.
Including in a most famous natural history museum (in a morally
advanced country) that always had been considered as a temple of science.
For example, ALL Scleractinian corals (the whole order), >1000 species,
from Antarctica to the northern polar circle, from the tidal zone to 6000m
depth, are CITES protected and treated like the panda and the rhinoceros.
The essential point: the international braindeficient armchairfarters are
satisfied. Polychaete-workers, be aware that those absurdity promoters may
next extend CITES regulations to ALL Polychaeta. You will then spend more
time in corresponding with ministries than looking at your worms.
And let Harry ten Hove (another subscriber of this list) tell you the
adventures of a couple of tiny serpulids (paratypes) now travelling from
continent to continent like apatride refugees because decades ago they had
not cared to respect future national laws ....
>Looking forward to not seeing you in Brazilian jails for ecological
>crimes (at least three years in prison, no bail allowed...).
Since the promoters of rain forest destruction do not go to jail, the
polychaete workers attending the meeting can easily measure how deeply
criminal illegal collecting of a worm would be.
zoophilously,
-----------------------------------
Helmut ZIBROWIUS
(Centre d'Oceanologie de Marseille)
Station Marine d'Endoume
Rue Batterie des Lions
13007 Marseille / France
E-MAIL: hzibrowi at com.univ-mrs.fr
TEL: within France 0491041624 from abroad +33 491041624
FAX: within France 0491041635 from abroad +33 491041635
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