other arrests!

James J. Kruse kruse at nature.berkeley.edu
Tue Sep 23 13:55:31 EDT 1997


On 23 Sep 1997 lday at iquest.net wrote:

> >To be on the safe side. If for no other reason than the only assurance
> >anyone has that you are NOT a commercial dealer is your word. 
> 
> Not true, the collector could show the authorities what s/he took before
> leaving the country.  

Hello,

This would not be practical for two reasons.  1) the authorities do not
know anything about insects or how to identify them (so we are back to
your word), and 2) it is impossible to give a list of specimens to
authorities at the time of exit because you may have 2000 microleps
or 20,000 gnats, leafhoppers, or some intelligible mass at the bottoms of
traps, or some that require dissection for identification, or you simply
don't have the resources or time out in the field to identify this stuff. 
Identification can take years...

What about undescribed species? Our museum has countless insects waiting
(in some cases, decades) on a student/specialist who will someday describe
the species.  

Cheers!
Jim Kruse
University of California at Berkeley
Dept. of Environ Sci, Policy and Mgmt.
Div. of Insect Biology
Sperling Lab
201 Wellman Hall
Berkeley, California, 94720-3113
(510) 642-5114/7410



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