[meteorite-list] It is a sad day.....

From: Jason Utas <meteoritekid_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 22:43:03 -0800
Message-ID: <93aaac891003082243l4d90589se5a486d88ed64a48_at_mail.gmail.com>

Greg, Ron, Chris, All,

And some here might disagree with you about your point of view;
"something that [you]'ve observed over the past few years" isn't fact,
it's opinion, and if you want to start a debate about how large
governments are bad, I think you should take it elsewhere - and
perhaps stop stating your point of view as though it was fact.

With regards to that sort of a decision about meteorites - nothing's
changed recently, and even if it did or had, it wouldn't stop anyone
from hunting for them; it's easy enough to say that you're looking for
*anything* else...and if they ask you what the brown rock that you've
found is, do you really expect the BLM officer to know what a
meteorite looks like?
This whole topic is inane - all of the meteorites that we've found on
public land belong to the government, and they've yet to start
claiming them, with few exceptions.
Be happy with that, and if that changes, let me know.

Personally, I agree with Ron Hartman. Yes, I believe that responsible
hunters with cameras and GPS' should be allowed to hunt. But the data
that's being lost by people who don't care to carefully record each
chip...it's just not scientific. There's a reason archaeologists grid
their sites meticulously in an attempt to find and use every iota of
information that they might attain from their field work: it's because
once they've been there and gone through it, that information is
either found and recorded, or it's lost to science forever.

It's at least partly why native american remains and vertebrate
fossils are on the prohibited list - most of the people looking to
recover them simply don't record the scientific information necessary
to place them in a useful scientific frame, and that's recognized by
the scientific community and by politicians (I know, there are other
political reasons why we can't pick up indian relics, but at least
take vertebrate fossils into account).

Unless you advocate the legality of collecting all such materials in a
commercial fashion, I really don't see how you can ask for meteorites
in particular. It just seems like a political self-interest argument
that you're only putting forth because *you* want the right to do what
*you* want, regardless of what's better for science.

I'm seeing a lot of loss.

Until a few years ago, every single fragment from every single lakebed
in California was carefully documented, recorded, and submitted. It's
the only reason that we were able to map complex strewn-fields and
fragmentation fields on many lakebeds, and we made sure to grid
several lakes in such a way as to find nearly two-hundred stones on
lakebeds that were "searched out." Stones ranging from about a pound
down to half a gram.
This isn't happening universally anymore.

Which isn't to say that many people aren't doing spectacular jobs of
documenting their finds, but perhaps there should be some sort of
qualifying criteria for the ability to pick up these scientific
treasures.

On our last hunting trip, amongst other things, we recovered a single
twelve-fragment stone from a California lakebed. The initial seven
fragments were relatively easy to find; we spent an additional four
hours crawling over the area, which resulted in the finding of five
more fragments, three of which weighed about 0.2-0.1 grams, one of
which was nearly sixty feet away.
I don't know if we found all of them, but I know for a fact that if I
did miss any, they were in that 0.1 to 0.2 gram size-range, and, given
the fact that daylight was fading, I couldn't have done better. We'll
be returning there anyways, to "clean up." The total weight of all of
the fragments was something like fifteen grams.

http://picasaweb.google.com/MeteoriteKid/PersonalFinds#5426012774669234562

Perhaps we shouldn't have photographed every find, or GPS'd them all,
or measured the distances between each so that we would be able to
draw a map of the field later.

But we did, and now that information will be available to science
forever, and it will not be lost. Was it worth four hours of our
lives to take care of that? Four hours that we could have spent
hunting elsewhere - or perhaps getting food?
Perhaps, perhaps not, but that information is now safe.
And many hunters nowadays don't put forth the effort. Some do. Many do not.
It's why, while we do have information regarding the Franconia, Gold
Basin, and Ash Creek strewnfields, we do not have good maps of any of
these, aside from Jim Kriegh's original map of Gold Basin, which is
now still useful but relatively obsolete.

You tell me what's better: the right for irresponsible hunters to lose
information, or the protection of this irreplaceable scientific
information. The rocks aren't going anywhere. Even if it takes a
century for the appropriate scientific programs to come about that
will recover them, they won't age much in that time, if at all.

The age of profiteering off of dinosaur fossils by people like Edward
Cope and Othniel Marsh undoubtedly uncovered a vast amount of
information and fossils - to quote Wikipedia, as unreliable as it is,
"Unfortunately, many valuable dinosaur specimens were damaged or
destroyed due to the pair's rough methods: for example, their diggers
often used dynamite to unearth bones (a method modern paleontologists
would find appalling). Despite their unrefined methods, the
contributions of Cope and Marsh to paleontology were vast: Marsh
unearthed 86 new species of dinosaur and Cope discovered 56, a total
of 142 new species."

This, in my mind, is what many people are doing today in the field of
meteorites. Yes, many meteorites are being recovered, but look around
you at the staggering scientific losses that are occurring
simultaneously...

And Chris, too, is right. The existence of an un-enforced law that
"protects" meteorites in the United States is likely the sole reason
that we don't have more prohibitive and widely enforced laws. Be
happy with the BLM website, and the fact that they likely couldn't
enforce the law even if they exhibited a wish to (and they haven't, by
and large).

Jason

On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 8:59 PM, GREG LINDH <geeg48 at msn.com> wrote:
>
>
> ? ?Jason,
>
> ?Just stating an observation about something that I've observed over the past few years. ?My statement wasn't just about our current administration. ?The statement was a generalization about government. ?I stand by what I said. ?The meteorite thing is just one example of the intrusion of government into the lives of people. ?The only reason it is bothering the members here is that it affects them directly. ?I don't see any reason that people shouldn't be able to hunt for meteorites on any land, except Indian land or private property (without permission). ?All the restrictions have *never* made sense to me. ?My post's subject is directly attached to the subject of meteorites. ?Bottom line: it is the unwarranted intrusion of government that upset Ruben. ?No? ?If this is indeed a new ruling that eliminates meteorite hunting, then my topic seems quite relevant.
>
>
> ?Greg Lindh
>
>
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
>> Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 20:36:04 -0800
>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] It is a sad day.....
>> From: meteoritekid at gmail.com
>> To: geeg48 at msn.com; meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>>
>> Really, Greg?
>> Politics?
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 8:17 PM, GREG LINDH wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Ruben,
>>>
>>> Everyone should take this to heart....the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. Our government is getting quite big, no?
>>>
>>>
>>> Greg Lindh
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------------
>>>> Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 18:51:50 -0700
>>>> From: mrmeteorite at gmail.com
>>>> To: damoclid at yahoo.com
>>>> CC: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>>>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] It is a sad day.....
>>>>
>>>> Richard and all,
>>>>
>>>> This is NOT just for Oregon and Washington (Hell, who is hunting
>>>> meteorites there anyway?)
>>>>
>>>> John Blennart has been talking with government people who have assured
>>>> him. "All the old Forest Service and BLM web sites will be changed to
>>>> read the new rules for meteorites."
>>>>
>>>> This is REAL! John has been saying this was in the works for weeks now
>>>> - It seems that the recent interest in meteorites made them look into
>>>> doing this.
>>>>
>>>> Rock On!
>>>>
>>>> Ruben Garcia
>>>>
>>>> Website: http://www.mr-meteorite.net
>>>> Articles: http://www.meteorite.com/blog/
>>>> Videos: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=meteorfright#p/u
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Received on Tue 09 Mar 2010 01:43:03 AM PST