Deposit of type material

[Mike Crisp]

Jorge Soberon Mainero <jsoberon at MIRANDA.ECOLOGIA.UNAM.MX> wrote:

>This morning the committee that is writing the new Mexican regulations
>for scientific collecting permits discussed a topic of interest to many of
>you, and I was asked to use TAXACOM to explore the opinions of foreign
>taxonomists. The point is an article of the law which in the proposal
>reads as follows:
>
>"In the case that the material collected in Mexico is used to describe
>new species, it will be necessary for the foreign scientist to deposit
>part of the type material in a Mexican collection with an infrastructure
>that guarantees its preservation and maintenance"
>
>We went for almost two hours over this point without reaching an
>agreement. For several of us the article expressed something which is a
>matter of principle. Oponents to the article, however, felt that it may
>cause unecessary concern among foreign taxonomists without improving what
>is almost a rule of cooperation between the main Mexican collections
>and their foreign counterparts.
>
>Your comments will be useful for our discussion.

As a taxonomist working in a country where most of the types are held in
northern hemisphere institutions, with our access to them severely
restricted, I strongly support your principle.  Imagine how the Americans
or Europeans would feel if the types of their flora were locked away on
another continent!

Yours,