The Tupi people, one of the main ethnic groups of Brazilian indigenous people, believe in a male supernatural being called “Curupira” that guards the forest in Tupi mythology. I crowned this BLOG with his name because I aspire the BLOG, which deals with insects as part of the nature, to play a role just like Curupira who protects the forest from the destructive habits of man.
02 Sep, 2008
I received a visit yesterday from an inspector of IBAMA (Brazilian Institute for Environment and Renewable Resources), and I was notified that......
unless I submitted a list of the insect specimens returned from INPA the other day and the permit to allow the storage of insects* within 48 hours, all of the specimens would be seized again, this time, by IBAMA. Following a brief consultation with my legal counsel last night, we went to see the chief inspector at the IBAMA local headquarters at nine o'clock this morning and found out that INPA had filed a claim on the specimens with IBAMA in Brazilia, attaching a copy of the newspaper article reporting the return of the specimens from INPA in June. They are trying to get the specimens back via IBAMA.
I really wonder where on earth this pertinaciousness of INPA comes from. In any case, I will have to counter them with my own pertinacity that I usually save for insect observations.
Note:
* Any museum wishing to exhibit insect specimens is required to obtain a permit from IBAMA that authorizes it to store such specimens for exhibition purposes. I had received the certificate from the IBDF (now defunct Brazilian Institute for Forestry Development, the predecessor of IBAMA) to start the operation of my museum. When the IBDF was transformed into IBAMA in September of 2001, I re-registered my museum with the new organization. But the museum's holding list submitted for re-registration did not include those specimens that had been seized by the federal police in the previous month because they were held in fed's custody at the time of re-registration. The current point of dispute: my claim is that the permission granted by the IBDF for the then-seized specimens should remain valid even after IBAMA (the successor of the IBDF) came into being, especially considering the provisional legal status of the specimens at that time, whereas INPA is prodding IBAMA to pull the rug from under me and my museum on the grounds of documentary discrepancies.
