Philip
Nigel is absolutely right to point to the Jurassic Coast scheme. I strongly recommend looking at the articles by Richard Edmonds and his colleagues.
Also - before you get much further with this, you might want to consider
(a) how compulsory, if at all, any scheme should be
(b) what you mean by 'nation'. England (where you are) or the UK? I am not being tendentious just because we are in the runup to the 2014 indy referendum up here in Scotland: it really has substantial practical
implications (as perhaps also implicit in Cindy's comments). Site conservation (under which fossil collecting will fall) and "national" (in this sense) museums are the responsibilities of the various parliaments/assemblies, and here the UK Parliament in Westminster
is effectively the 'English' one, except that it deals with all export of fossils in its role as the UK parliament. So any UK wide policy would need a four way agreement (at least at the moment). And with what that implies for funding, organization,
etc. About the only existing body that would be able to do this would be the JNCC perhaps?
In fact, what was effectively a recording or rather prior licensing scheme (which could easily have been developed into a recording scheme, once the licences were allocated) was proposed for Scotland, at least for fossil vertebrates,
a few years back. This arose because of perceived losses of fossils from the Highlands and Islands. Maureen Macmillan was, if I recall rightly, a list MSP for that area [under the bizarre system set up in 1997 to prevent any one party ever getting a majority
of seats]. She proposed compulsory licensing of all fossil vertebrate collecting as an amendment to the updating of the nature conservation legislation for Scotland.
On further thought, Parliament decided that this was not a good idea, at least straight away. I believe that Ms Macmillan was persuaded to withdraw her proposal in return fr legislation for a Scottish Fossil Code to be developed by a
working party to look at the wider question of fossil collecting and preservation, as seemed most sensible.
The Code does encourage appropriate use and reporting of finds in any case, if only to museums and specialists, and though it does not constitute a scheme in the Jurassic Coast or, I suspect, your sense, at least its ultimate
aims are probably similar. So you may want to have a look at the Scottish Fossil Code (in its more detailed version rather than the simple version) and the accounts of it, especially those by Colin Macfadyen e.g. in
Earth Heritage etc.
Mike
Hi All
Topic for discussion
Should there be a national fossil recording scheme? Should such a thing be led by the NHM? Who has the time?
What is the state of British palaeontological research?
Philip Hadland
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