- What sort of sick bastard decapitates European bison re-introduced to the wild?
- Might have to introduce eucalypts to different places soon. No doubt that will also end in tears.
- Diversity helps with flooding. But it’s probably too late.
- USDA buys some insurance. Because life.
- Animal portraits are guaranteed to make your day better. Even this day.
“USDA buys some insurance”: USDA deposits in Svalbard have always intrigued me. Under the terms of Article 7 of the original Depositor Agreement when duplicate samples were placed in Svalbard the the original samples in the USDA genebank would have to be managed according to the ITPGRFA. In effect, the USA would have ratified the Treaty by default. I have always thought – and said so strongly, not least to the Government of Norway – that Article 7 was a mess – ill-drafted to the point of gibberish, a huge embarrassment to the Government of Norway and off-putting to the very many developing countries who are still not distributing samples from their national collections.
I seem to have won my point. There is a new Depositor Agreement, streamlined and lacking any specific reference to the ITPGRFA. Article 7 is no more. Thank you, Norway.
If the USA wishes to remove the `Sword of Damocles’ of the ITPGRFA hanging over its samples from the old agreement covering the early USDA deposits the USDA can simply ask to sign the new, better, more user-friendly new Svalbard Depositor Agreement. This specifically indicates in Art. 2.1 that “The agreement covers all Deposited Material deposited by the Depositor in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault”.
Some of us will remember the big fuss about the SSE samples being deposited in Svalbard. The issue then was the Depositor Agreement link to the Treaty. This problem has now gone away, thanks to Norway doing the right thing.
Both versions of the Depositor Agreement are available from the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre.
Me again: I am hearing that the USA has ratified the ITPGRA – any news?