写真はエゾシロチョウです (Aporia crataegi ssp), そしてそれは 現在返送中 韓国生物資源研究所へ. ローンは返済されます, あるべき姿, 毎日 – 何千もの標本を数えることさえできます. 私自身、研究を保留している一握りの美術館から数百匹の蛾が貸し出されています. 仕事が終わったらすぐに (または延長をリクエストする), 標本は私の論文と一緒にすぐに返されます. 残念ながら、ローンが切れたのは珍しいことではありません, 許可なく出て行った, 何十年もの間. 私の知る限り、少なくとも1つのケースでは (名前と機関が編集されました) 貸与された標本は、彼らが小さな国際事件を引き起こしたほど長い間出ていました. 外国大使は正式に標本を要求しなければなりませんでした, それは彼らの国への私たちの大使によって直接提示されなければなりませんでした.
この蝶, しかしながら, ローンの一部だったとは思わない. では、なぜ韓国に戻るのですか?
記事を読んで、Sという印象を受けます. 韓国の研究者はローンの返済を要求していない, しかし、代わりにの返還を求める “取られた” 韓国の財産.
韓国の研究者は、これはユニークなケースだったと言います – 実際には , これは国に返される昆虫の最大数です. 「昨年2回韓国を訪問し、韓国から採取した昆虫標本を返還するようハンガリー人を説得し、昆虫の共同研究を開始するよう提案した。,」と研究所の専門家オ・ギョンヒは言った.
これが実際に当てはまるかどうかについて少し混乱しています; おそらく作者は何でボールを逃したのでしょう “ローン” 実際には, またはおそらく翻訳で何かが失われました. しかし、引用はそれ自体で成り立っているようです. 私たちは皆、過去数年間の外国政府が要求する傾向に精通しています, またはエジプトの古代遺物の場合は要求, 貴重な文化遺産の復活. 私はその問題に心から同意します. はい, 大英博物館は、パルテノン神殿が略奪された場所からギリシャに返還する必要があります. はい, エジプトの王のミイラはエジプトに戻されるべきです. これらの作品, 彼らは国際的に関連している間, 現存する人々のユニークな文化史の一部です.
蝶 (すべての昆虫と動物), 盗まれた遺物と同じカテゴリに分類されない. 主に, insects are composed of populations of living animals that can continually be sampled. If Korea would like larger collections of their own insects, then Korean entomologists should be out in the field collecting (I know of some excellent Korean entomologists!). Secondarily, while insects are part of a country’s natural heritage, they were obviously not created or invented by humans – thus they can not be directly owned by the state. Of course that is my own opinion that wouldn’t hold up in court. しかしながら, the fact that these insects were either collected during a time where permits did not exist – or they were collected legally under permit – means that new policies or laws should not affect past events. Most permits already have stipulations where you have to leave a certain percentage of everything you collected in the country before you leave. I also highly doubt that anyone would be encouraged to do research in a country that requires 100% of all specimens collected to be returned. That misses the entire point of building collections.
Every country should build and maintain their own scientific collections. One of the strongest reasons for allowing foreign research is to not only further the cause of science on a whole, but to distribute insect specimens globally to assure existence of voucher specimens for perpetuity. There are also secondary benefits of making specimens available to researchers in their home country. Students can come along and have direct access to material that is either too expensive to acquire fresh, or too fragile to ship 10,000 miles.
Human nature tends to lean towards the unstable – war has claimed many museum collections of Poland and Germany (and across Europe as whole). Nature and accidents take care of the rest – within the last year a significant collection of spiders and snakes were lost in Sao Paulo, ブラジル. Examples are too numerous to list and date back to the loss of the Library of Alexandria around 48 BCE (which wasn’t a natural history museum, but you get the point). Even more tragic are collections that are lost due to neglect. A famous collection of 19th century Chilean Diptera types were almost all lost to dermestids. While these events are jarring – we should learn the importance of distributing our vouchers as widely as possible. If Korea has a goal to house all specimens ever collected from Korea で Korea – then one incident – 言う… a war with North Korea… could wipe out all known specimens and set Korean science back a hundred years.
I am still left with questions. Why don’t these specimens already exist in Korean collections. Even if they don’t, why ask for everything and not a synoptic collection? (perhaps this did happen but was spun to be more nationalistic). It might have been polite of Hungary to return some specimens, but I would be interested in how political this situation became. Did the researchers agree to this ahead of time? Or was it a decision made by directors and deans…
I for one hope strongly that this is not a trend that takes hold. The sentiment in many Latin American countries is already one of closely guarded skepticism – permits are nearly impossible to come across in the first place. While I can understand the feeling of “these are our flora and fauna – keep out and let us do the work”, it is not a practical solution. The fact remains that science isn’t being done in the countries with the highest biodiversity at a rate fast enough to even approach the rate of habitat loss. While discovering what is in the forest will not help protect it, at least we could rescue the data before it is lost forever.
Perhaps I am naive to hope that science will remain apolitical, しかし、私たち全員が国際的な標本を返還することを余儀なくされる前に、私たちは傾向を注意深く観察する必要があります.
