collecting

[Doug Yanega]

Adolf Ceska wrote:

>At this time of "fiscal constrains," some herbaria are considering to
>impose charges for "curating" voucher specimens deposited by private
>consultants. That will be yet another sad message to the consultants NOT
>to collect voucher specimens. I hope that these charges will never be
>implemented.

That's not the thing to hope for: the thing to hope for is that the
agencies for which the consulting work is being done will *require* that
all work is vouchered, and this cost will be passed on; if consultants were
*forced* to deposit vouchers, then the problem would be minimized. Of
course, this is obviously only wishful thinking, and while we're wishing we
might as well also wish that consultants be certified to do taxonomy. Or
are we also expected to continue doing IDs for consultants for free, as
well?
It's also complicated by the fact that a fair bit of the environmental
consulting done these days is in order to establish the NON-occurrence of
specific sensitive taxa, so folks such as developers are often going to
want to *avoid* having consultants collect any specimens which could come
back to haunt them, even if it costs nothing extra. While there are
probably some top-notch consultants who would be willing to pay to house
vouchers, and could pass the costs on *anyway* (because they are involved
in litigious situations where the vouchers could be important to winning
their case), such cases are probably a minority, and you'd have to overcome
not only a general resistance to fees, but widespread resistance to
instituting a requirement for vouchering in the first place. Environmental
consulting is a very political (and commercialized) enterprise, and
expecting it to adhere to strict ethical and scientific policies is a tall
order.

Peace,


Doug Yanega       Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
                http://insects.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82