Although there are progressive mining companies that attempt to save our mineral heritage, the vast majority of material coming to market is looted. Sometimes this is done with a wink and a nod by the companies to augment the miserable salaries of the miners. I've often thought that mineral specimens are really cheap masterpieces and a mine is like an old master. Once dead or mined out, there will be no more. Now with high end prices in the 6 figures, the mineral market, at least at the high end is starting to look like the art market. Combining cultural heritage with big bucks has produced a demand for provenance for antiquities and mineral specimens may not be too far behind. Here's an article from today's New York times that tells of the travails of high end antiquity collectors. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/arts/design/antiquity-market-grapples-with-stricter-guidelines-for-gifts.html?pagewanted=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120715 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,265982#msg-265982 Fri, 24 May 2013 00:22:48 +0000 Phorum 5.2.15a http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266265#msg-266265 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266265#msg-266265
Notice that most of my post refers to fossils, which have more restrictive regulations than minerals. Also, please check the CFR's for the federal definition of casual collecting, before doing anything more than overturning a rock. Always check with the local land management offices before you collect, to get an understanding of local policies and procedure. They often can direct you to collecting sites. Regulations governing state lands are often more lenient than federal regulations, but most states, at least out west, have far more federal land than state land. With just a few state land exceptions, fossils for the private sector are collected only from private land.

Collecting crystals from Forest Service land in Idaho may not be a problem, but digging might be, even just with pick and shovel. Check to be sure, before you dig. If you want to open a large scale dig, using powered equipment, there will generally be state permits and federal mine plans required before your claim can be worked.

Bob]]> Robert Farrar General Wed, 18 Jul 2012 20:41:26 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266248#msg-266248 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266248#msg-266248
[www.idl.idaho.gov]

from the Idaho Department of Lands, it lays out the laws, rules and regulations for rockhounding on public lands.

From my understanding, it is not nearly as restrictive as Bob would have it sound. it says specifically that:
"All Idaho State endowment lands are open to casual exploration for gemstones and mineral specimens providing they are not under a valid exploration location or mineral lease."
And also: "Rockhounds are welcome to collect rocks and gemstones from most public land administered by the US Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management, but there are some exceptions..." those exceptions being wilderness areas and areas that are under active mining claims.

I get the feeling that rules governing rock and mineral collecting vary widely by state; some states may be far more restrictive than others. In New Mexico for instance, I understand there was an effort to ban rockhounding in an area that was actually called "Rockhound State Park!" (I dont know if that ban was successfully passed.) But from the sound of it, it is NOT a crime to dig crystals on US forest service land in Idaho, at any rate. Now if I was to go in with heavy machinery and start digging away, then I would probably need to file a mining claim, and I believe there ARE some regulations concerning re-selling items that you collected yourself without a permit, however it is apparently NOT a crime to simply do some casual specimen hunting on MOST public lands.]]> Matt Ciranni General Wed, 18 Jul 2012 19:20:21 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266235#msg-266235 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266235#msg-266235 Kim Macdonald General Wed, 18 Jul 2012 17:49:25 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266233#msg-266233 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266233#msg-266233
In a word, gaining legal permission to collect something can be COMPLICATED. Do your homework before you dig, and the chance of problems arising dramatically decreases.

Bob]]> Robert Farrar General Wed, 18 Jul 2012 17:31:05 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266231#msg-266231 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266231#msg-266231
Here are yet 2 other incidents which come to my memory. Collecting rocks, geodes, and fossils (along with all other plant and animal life) is forbidden by the Indiana DNR on the shorelines of Lake Monroe Reservoir. There is a local university acquaintance who studies microfossils, and as such goes thru bags of mud and fine gravel with his time on a university scanning electron microscope (SEM). Several years ago he had a plastic sandwich bag or two of lakeshore mud in his backpack. An Indiana DNR or conservation officer asked him to empty the bag(s) of mud back onto the lakeshore and not pick up any more! Parenthetically the law states that "recent artifacts" can be collected or picked up. These phrases are euphemisms for GARBAGE!

About 10 years ago a graduate student collected an invertebrate fossil on the lake shore that no one recognized. It was eventually sent off to an expert on unusual invertebrate fossils and the report made it into the periodical "Nature" about June of 2000. The student then made the mistake of showing all this to our local newspaper and it was prominently reported in the newspaper as something like "student collects rare fossil". Anyway, within a few weeks, Indiana conservation officers showed up at his door and made him donate the finding to either the Indiana State Museum or (I think) the Smithsonian where it is today. He faced prosecution of stealing state property if he resisted.

Moral of these stories is that "provenance does matter"
CHEERS.......BOB]]> BOB HARMAN General Wed, 18 Jul 2012 17:10:38 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266224#msg-266224 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266224#msg-266224 Reiner Mielke General Wed, 18 Jul 2012 16:16:03 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266219#msg-266219 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266219#msg-266219
Don S.]]> Don Saathoff General Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:39:57 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266210#msg-266210 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266210#msg-266210 David Von Bargen General Wed, 18 Jul 2012 11:40:04 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266209#msg-266209 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266209#msg-266209 BOB HARMAN General Wed, 18 Jul 2012 10:41:34 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266202#msg-266202 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266202#msg-266202
It just seems like, as time goes on, laws get more and more absurd, to the point where it is beyond ridiculousness. Whatever happened to public lands for the public?]]> Matt Ciranni General Wed, 18 Jul 2012 04:29:50 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266193#msg-266193 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266193#msg-266193
I've been in this game for a VERY long time.

I have yet to encounter a field collector who does not engage in some sort of commercial activity associated with what he drags home..

Could be direct sales or trading with dealers.

If there is a field collector who has never participated in commerce from his finds..... please introduce yourself !!!.

Bart]]> Bart Cannon General Wed, 18 Jul 2012 00:46:44 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266180#msg-266180 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266180#msg-266180 museums, which is sad, since it is a time honored tradition, and one which has saved for posterity many many fine minerals, otherwise destined for the crusher.]]> Ray Hill General Tue, 17 Jul 2012 21:17:29 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266149#msg-266149 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266149#msg-266149 It does feel good to save something from the certain destruction of the crusher - 'tis a shame that is not always legal. Having been though the SUE T.rex case and follow-up suits, I know that the laws can be enforced in various manners depending upon the discretion of 'enforcer'. Permission granted does not necessarily put one in the clear for specimens collected. These days collecting permission must be very explicit, and the person granting permission must be made aware if there is any possibility that anything collected might be sold. Permission must be sought from the correct person, also. That person must be the one with absolute authority to render decisions, otherwise, as in the SUE T.rex case bad things can happen. We sought permission from the landowner, unaware that this particular situation also required permission from the Secretary of the Interior.

During the following prosecution, we found that as a business we could not collect fossils from Forest Service land, even if we had no intention of selling them. As far as I know, the US government has not granted a commercial permit for fossil collecting from federal lands, outside of petrified wood which is handled as a separate commodity under the Petrified Wood Act. All commercial activity on US Federal lands requires a Special Use Permit of some type. A permit to commercially salvage fossils has just never been granted. As Alfredo mentioned, it is perfectly legal for mines to grind them up.

Mineral collecting rules on Federal lands seem to be somewhat protected under mining laws, but must wonder about collecting things which could not be claimed under mining law, such as quartz and agates, etc.

Bob]]> Robert Farrar General Tue, 17 Jul 2012 15:20:29 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266127#msg-266127 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266127#msg-266127
I'm still not done.

Back in 1963 it was common knowledge that the Clay Center limestone quarry was closed on Sundays and that collecting was either allowed or not patrolled for trespass.

So my dad would take me and my nine year old brother to the bottom of the quarry in his Buick. I can't imagine a more dangerous place to set some little kids free in. I was 13. I found some good stuff. We traveled from Detroit.

Things were fine for a year or two, then the crusher jammed. The crusher jaws were frozen by an Estwing rock hammer. Always a solid tool.

Doesn't take a forensic scientist to reconstruct the evidence nor a very smart risk manager to shut down mineral collecting on their property.

I think the same thing happened at Mont St. Hilaire a few years later with the same result for collectors.

Bart]]> Bart Cannon General Tue, 17 Jul 2012 09:33:48 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266126#msg-266126 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266126#msg-266126
I don't think that the quotations you mention are universally agreed upon at the current time, but I hope they are.

As I mentioned, it often depends upon the whim of the head ranger.

If you ask the typical head ranger about permission to collect beforehand, you will get the cover my butt response.

And what I am providing is the cover my own butt response from my own collecting diaries from 1965 until 2012.

There are places in Washington State where the US Forest Service Rangers are afraid to get out of their trucks for fear of reprisal from the local claim holders. I consulted for some of them in the Liberty gold district. I suggested putting a bulldozer cut along a survey line, but cautioned that it would take a year to get the plan of operations approved. He laughed at me. He said I'll do it tomorrow.

Bart]]> Bart Cannon General Tue, 17 Jul 2012 09:14:18 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266120#msg-266120 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266120#msg-266120 "The only place one can legally and freely collect minerals is one's own mining claim, and then only when the USFS approves your Plan of Operations. There is an exception to that rule. If you make a royalty agreement with the mine or property owner."

I think it all depends on what you mean by "collect". Just casually/recreationally collecting minerals can be done in lots of different places - including on some National Forest Service lands.

For example, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, National Forest Service, Huron-Manistee National Forests website:

Gold Panning

"Casual/Recreational gold panning is allowed on most National Forest System lands, as long as it is done by hand and does not involve undercutting stream banks. No permit is required for casual gold panning. The use of sluices and portable dredges is not considered casual. To operate sluices or portable dredges requires a prospecting permit from the Bureau of Land Management. Because the Eastern United States is not subject to the 1872 Mining Law a claim cannot be filed."

Rock-Hounding/Fossil Collecting

"In most areas "Rock hounding" does not require special permission or fee payment when done as recreation, and is consistent with local management objectives. To make sure special permission or fee payment is not necessary please contact the District office in the area you wish to "Rock hound" in."

- Forest visitors are welcome to pick up mineral specimens, rock samples, invertebrate fossil casts and molds, geodes, or other earth oddities, and to pan for gold using hand tools.
- Collecting can be done on National Forest System lands where minerals are owned by others, including areas under federal lease, as long as it does not materially interfere with the rights granted to the mineral permittee/lessee.

<sub>Source:
United States Department of Agriculture, National Forest Service, Huron-Manistee National Forests website.
http://www.fs.usda.gov/activity/hmnf/recreation/rocks-minerals


FYI: The Huron-Manistee National Forests are two national forests (the Huron National Forest, established in 1909, and the Manistee National Forest, established in 1938) that were combined in 1945. They comprise 978,906 acres (3,960 km²) of public lands, including 5,786 acres (23 km²) of wetlands, extending across the northern lower peninsula of Michigan. The Huron-Manistee National Forests provide recreation opportunities for visitors, habitat for fish and wildlife, and resources for local industry. The headquarters for the forests is in Cadillac, Michigan.

Source: Wikipedia - Huron-Manistee National Forests - [en.wikipedia.org]</sub> ]]> AJMI General Tue, 17 Jul 2012 06:06:19 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266107#msg-266107 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266107#msg-266107
I'm not done.

There is a notion that removing a trivial amount of mineral specimens despoils the natural environment and diminishes the enjoyment of nature by the average visitor to our public lands.

This is utter nonsense, and would never be presented by a person who knows anything about a crystal pocket.

Of what value to society is a tightly packed, clay filled, more or less invisible jumble of junk and crystals to the public ?

Mineral collectors are heroes, bringing the beauty of nature to the general public. They hike in, hike out with a back wrenching pack, collect with care, clean, trim and display.

Without the mineral collector all that beauty would be unknown.

Bart]]> Bart Cannon General Tue, 17 Jul 2012 02:44:29 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266105#msg-266105 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266105#msg-266105
The only place one can legally and freely collect minerals is one's own mining claim, and then only when the USFS approves your Plan of Operations.

There is an exception to that rule. If you make a royalty agreement with the mine or property owner. I have done that successfully a few times because I pay every penny I promised.

The Sawtooth Wilderness Area allowed a collector to remove about 3 pounds of smoky quartz. Some ranger districts don't care depending upon who the head ranger is. That info is about 15 years old, so don't depend upon my word.

I still collect from road cuts on National Forest lands, but I think that is highly frowned upon, I am "on the move" and don't leave any rocks on the road so I justify that activity as causing no harm and removing the loose rock as a public service.

There is no collecting on Washington Department of Natural Resources lands unless a mineral club has a lease on a particular locality.

Those leases are no longer being offered as far as I know.

At one time, not too long ago the WADNR allowed the removal of three mineral specimens from the Mount Si Natural Recreation Area. Don't know if it still holds. Some friends of mine were arrested for carrying down a pack load of Japan Law twinned quartz from the celebrated northern Mt.Teneriffe breccia zone which is now within the Mount Si Natural Recreation area.

There are some BLM lands which have been designated as collecting areas. Mostly for petrified wood.

There is a good book on the subject. "Collecting the Natural World" by Donald Wolberg and Patsy Reinard.

It is about the legal requirements and personal liability of collecting plants, animals, rocks, minerals and fossils.

The publication date is 1997 so it is probably horribly dated. It does tell the fascinating (frustrating) story of Sue Henderson and Sue the T-Rex.

The field collecting part of our hobby is looking very grim.

Bart]]> Bart Cannon General Tue, 17 Jul 2012 02:29:15 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266100#msg-266100 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266100#msg-266100 reminds me of the law in Canada which requires special permission to export any specimen over $10,000 in value, that is unless you crush it first.

Reiner, that has long been one of my pet peeves too. And it isn't only Canada: In most of South America, the export of any fossils is prohibited; they are considered "national patrimony". If I pay some poor destitute Indians to collect brachiopods from a limestone quarry and mail them abroad, I've broken the law. If the cement company grinds thousands of them to powder, no law has been broken. Ditto for sharks teeth from a phosphate quarry. IMHO, anyone who breaks such laws by rescuing things from the crushers should be proud of themselves.]]> Alfredo Petrov General Tue, 17 Jul 2012 01:15:33 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266097#msg-266097 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266097#msg-266097 Reiner Mielke General Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:37:36 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266093#msg-266093 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266093#msg-266093 Michael Hatskel General Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:10:43 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266081#msg-266081 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266081#msg-266081 BOB HARMAN General Mon, 16 Jul 2012 22:23:01 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266074#msg-266074 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266074#msg-266074 I was a dealer at all of the Carnegie shows. The event ended when the Art Museum was having its Biennial. Also,
the main emphasis of the show the next year was the new Dinosaur Hall. It was never revived. It had nothing to do with legality or provenance of mineral specimens.


Chris]]> Chris Wright General Mon, 16 Jul 2012 20:38:15 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266071#msg-266071 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266071#msg-266071 Until several years ago there was a pretty good Pittsburgh, PA show at the Carnegie Museum (they have a great mineral display). Again, note that this was a show held in the museum; state owned property adhering to rather strict regulations and ethical standards. The show ended rather abruptly (?) and has not, to my knowledge, been resurrected. Now I am not sure of all the reasons, but they may have had something to do, at least in part, with the legality and ethics of possessing and selling questionably collected specimens. If any of all this discussion is true, it should be duly noted that shows in museums and other state venues have to adhere to a uniformly high ethical standard of specimen provenance which was the original theme of this thread. CHEERS.......BOB]]> BOB HARMAN General Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:36:56 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266068#msg-266068 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266068#msg-266068
Bob]]> Robert Farrar General Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:16:59 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266067#msg-266067 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266067#msg-266067 Ron Layton General Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:47:45 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266061#msg-266061 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266061#msg-266061
Some complaints have resulted not from mineral shows but rather from property owners googling their property and finding links to rocks on sale on dealers' websites or e-bay. Maybe eventually we'll see dealers labelling their specimens not only with the dreaded "POR" (price on request, or priced out of reach), but also with something like "LOCDAS" (locality divulged after sale) :-( ...Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Actually, I'm not too pessimistic about this. In recent years I notice an increasing trend towards fine specimens being produced by professional specimen miners who have a contract to lease a locality specifically for specimen mining. If you walk around a mineral show randomly looking at rocks, I think you'll see that only a minor percentage come from illegal plundering, and the percentage of that is dropping, if for no other reasons than that access in "first world" countries is more and more tightly controlled for liability reasons, and mining everywhere in the world is increasingly mechanized, resulting in fewer specimens to be saved in miners' lunchboxes.]]> Alfredo Petrov General Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:35:28 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266057#msg-266057 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266057#msg-266057 BOB HARMAN General Mon, 16 Jul 2012 15:08:50 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266042#msg-266042 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266042#msg-266042 The subject is interesting because it fits anywhere and here in Portugal there are also some places that currently can not take samples because the owner of the quarry was discovered that they were stupid and take his money from his pockets.
In this case the Museum to legally require the provenance of the samples must have a legal basis. To have a legal basis for any situation relating to the topic will have to be legislated which presupposes that the subject was debated and then approved by appropriate Assembly of this State or of the Nation.

Martins da Pedra]]> António Manuel Ináçio Martins General Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:14:11 +0000 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266038#msg-266038 http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,6,265982,266038#msg-266038 At the Indiana State Museum show where there was a clause in the contract that required that the specimen be legally obtained, was there anything in the contract that specified what documents would be accepted as poof that the specimens were legally obtained? Did this apply to foreign as wekk as domestic specimens? Did this also apply to gemstones and jewelry? If this sort of provision was strictly enforced I think that it would be possible for 90% of the dealers in the show to be in the show.]]> Rock Currier General Mon, 16 Jul 2012 08:09:32 +0000