On February 2, 2005, *Mr. AKAKA (for himself, Mr. BAUCUS, Mrs. FEINSTEIN, Mr. DURBIN, Mr. ROBERTS, and Mr. INOUYE) introduced the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.  This bill has already passed out of this committee without amendments and is ready for action on the floor of the Senate.  Plans appear to have this bill pass by a simple voice vote (something the Senate is not willing to do for federal judicial nominations!).
*[Daniel AKAKA of Hawaii was the same sponsor of this bill the last time it was introduced and failed. (108th Session of Congress-2004)]  

The best plan now is to let your Senators from your state know about this strategy and request their help in blocking any passage of this bill by VOICE VOTE on the floor of the Senate without input from commercial and amateur collectors.  This will give us an opportunity to provide some testimony in committee to again block Senate passage.

This is very bad legislation, and I ask that you do what you can to block passage by voice vote. There are many good reasons why, and they boil down to:

1. This bill masquerades as protecting fossils and academic inquiry. IT DOES NOT! To the contrary, it inhibits knowledge and inquiry. The majority of what is known about fossils has been gathered by commercial and amateur collectors, and most museum collections are the result of commercial and amateur collections.

2. The Secretary of the Interior asked that academic, amateur and commercial fossil collectors be consulted in the preparation of potential legislation regarding fossil resources on public lands. We were not consulted, our input was not solicited, and there was never any opportunity for us to testify. If the bill is stopped, goes back to committee and we get our chance to testify, the bill will most certainly be scrapped, as it serves neither the resource nor the public.

3. This legislation is the product of the academics alone, in concert with BLM and Forest Service personnel through the aggressive, organized lobbying efforts of only a few powerful members of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, and would be a tragic mistake if enacted. It is elitist and exclusionary and was crafted and promoted in a strategy specifically designed to ignore and bypass those of us who would be most affected and the public at large.

Links to find your local House and Senate Representatives are listed below. You will just need to list your state and zip code, and the page will return the mailing address, phone numbers, and additional links for more information such as local offices, for your Representative.  Make sure that you send copies both to their local office, and their office in Washington D.C., AND ALSO CALL THEIR OFFICE IN D.C. 

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Thanks for your help in this very important issue.  Remember that the loss in the passage of this bill may lead to additional legislation to further restrict the collecting of petrified wood and invertebrate fossils.  Can mineral collecting restrictions on federal lands be too far behind???

Jim Flora 
SFMS Webmaster and Field Trip Chair
                       
  Email: sfms@amfed.org
website: http://amfed.org/sfms

(Source of some of the above content was taken from http://www.aaps.net/legislative-alert.htm and the March 2005 issue of the AFMS Newsletter.)

Dear Senator Dole;

 We, the undersigned members of the Gem and Mineral Society of Franklin,  NC, Inc, wish to go on record as being unalterably opposed to S 263,  the misnamed "Paleo Resources Preservation Act."  This is simply a bad Bill, for the following reasons: 
 
 First, and most important, this Act creates an entirely new class of criminals!  The penalties associated with the act of innocently picking up a vertebrate fossil are draconian in the extreme, treating a hobbyist as though he/she were a Heroin dealer!                       .
 
 Second, the "Act" will totally fail of its stated purpose.  You do NOT "Preserve" a fossil by leaving it in the ground, or worse, exposed to the elements.  For example, if a Shark's tooth were to be found on a National Seashore, the act of picking it up would create a new criminal, while leaving it where it is would leave it exposed to erosion and hence destruction.  Similarly with weathered "Dinosaur Bone."
 
 The fact is that there are, at a minimum, a hundred "Rockhounds" in the field at any given moment for every so-called "Expert."  It stands to reason, and is, indeed, correct, that a minimum of 95 per cent. of the fossils ever located have been located by amateurs!  Most of these have gone into Museum Collections.  Our own Museum attests to this fact. 
 
 It is our understanding that the sponsors of this Bill (Senators from Hawaii!  How many  "Vertebrate fossils" are there on a volcanic island?!)  want to sneak this through the Senate without a roll call vote.  We request that you resist this tactic! For this class of penalty, a Senator should be willing to stand up and be counted!
 
 Also, we ask that you oppose this Bill, work to defeat it, and if it should by some mischance pass the Senate, immediately introduce a Bill to repeal it on the grounds that it is a failure from the beginning, and that it wrongfully criminalizes an avocation.            
 
 Respectfully yours,
                     
 Linda Behr, president                               . 
 The Gem & Mineral Society of Franklin, NC, Inc.