Sunday 8 November 2009
Fossil trade puts China’s natural history at risk
China’s opening up may have led to an economic miracle, but it has been a mixed blessing for one of the world’s major finds of prehistoric fossils, as dealers and foreign buyers have exploited the lack of effective heritage laws to spirit them overseas.
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Fossil trade puts China’s natural history at risk
08 November 2009
China’s opening up may have led to an economic miracle, but it has been a mixed blessing for one of the world’s major finds of prehistoric fossils, as dealers and foreign buyers have exploited the lack of effective heritage laws to spirit them overseas.
Beijing rightly says they belong in China and has drafted new laws to protect them, but it needs to calm scientists’ concerns that they will be frustrated by official corruption.
In the 1980s, as private enterprise spread under economic reforms, poor but resourceful farmers in Liaoning province dug into the hillsides and unearthed a treasure trove of fossils, from the Cretaceous to the Jurassic periods, for which there was a lucrative market in the West. This led to a multimillion dollar trade in China’s fossil heritage akin to the foreign plunder of its art treasures.
Locals and vendors prospered, especially from sourcing and dealing in fossils of vertebrates such as dinosaurs and eggs, while the Chinese and international scientific communities fought in vain to save specimens for research and posterity.
Five years ago, when the government legislated to make all fossils the property of the state, the trade in them went underground, where it has continued to flourish, though there has been a crackdown to discourage the smuggling of bird and dinosaur fossils.
A draft law published earlier this year by the Legislative Office of the State Council and the Ministry of Land and Resources to tighten protection of fossils and curb smuggling puts vertebrate fossils under the ministry’s direct control.
As we report today, however, many scientists are concerned that this will foster corruption among ministry officials at the provincial and local level and fuel the illicit trade.
Indeed, provincial officials are fighting for control over permits to dig and the right to regulate fossil finds through their own approved museums. If they win, scientists fear this will open the way for extortion of paleontologists who want to conduct legitimate research and bribing of officials by dealers acting for wealthy domestic and foreign buyers.
Chinese paleontologists have lobbied Beijing to take central control of fossil specimens and to set up a scientific panel to regulate the collection at a national level.
China’s natural history is at stake. Among the remains of more than 20 biological categories found by those farmers since the 1980s, preserved under layers of prehistoric volcanic upheavals, was the earliest bird in the world with a beak. Later discoveries forced scientists to revise their ideas of dinosaurs and shed new light on the origin of birds.
China can rightly blame theft by foreigners for the loss of art treasures. Unesco has estimated that more than 1.6 million objects are to be found in foreign countries. There have been calls for Beijing to legislate to prohibit the sale of national relics in foreign countries.
It would be a national tragedy and disgrace, however, if blame for the loss of any more of its fossil heritage had to be laid partly at the door of corrupt Chinese officials.
The world’s palaeontology community has rallied to the side of Chinese colleagues trying to protect priceless scientific and national heritage.
Beijing should heed their voices and give it effective protection worthy of a national treasure.
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