>Come on some of you museum and university guys, tell me I'm wrong.  Your
>problem is not being prohibited from collecting, rather it is the
>inability to get enough interested field workers from the ranks of
>"collectors" to actually collect scientifically helpful material in a
>rigorously structured and targeted, long term program regardless of the
>target specie's utility for personal display.
 
I, too, have encountered ignorant regulation that interfered with
scientific collection.  It is illegal to export fossils from Alberta
without official permission.  However, when my advisor tried to bring some
specimens into the province to return to the Royal Tyrrel Museum, customs
confiscated the box.  I think they must have had thoughts of dinosaur
bones, but these were actually Paleozoic clams that had been sliced up to
examine their structure.  Definitely not something that could be sold to a
tourist for 50,000 dollars as the customs agent claimed (unless the tourist
was really gullible and did not open the box).