Search the Community

Dear Fellow Forum Goers, Have you found that over your lifetime, the fossil collecting grounds you've so frequently enjoyed and have come to love have degraded? Lately, I have been ruminating on the fact that the popularization of fossil collecting in New Jersey (my local collecting ground) has brought many wonderful things (many new collectors, support for paleontology across the board, and - maybe - additional funding to paleontology communities, institutions, and organizations), but has also engendered / worsened a host of deleterious processes, such as the picking-over of common collecting areas, egregious collecting practices, and some level of local environmental degradation due to an unsustainable amount of collecting (in my case, stream ecosystems, predominantly, are being affected). I suspect I am not alone in feeling this way. It is very easy for human activity to eliminate something good (e.g., human hunting and mega-fauna, overfishing, slash-and-burn agriculture); this seems no different for fossil collecting, but this degradation in fossil collecting seems to have become more noticeable in the last few years, especially given the incentives that the Internet and social media place on people to post amazing or numerous fossil finds. There is something nauseating about knowing that what were once treasured places for you to go will now either be cordoned off to collecting or will be squeezed so thin of fossils that you are left wondering whether it was really a good idea to post that trip report or picture on Instagram or video on YouTube. Main Idea -->: I am interested in hearing about your stories and perspectives on this topic, i.e. fossil collecting grounds you've gone to that have become so miserable due to over-collecting, poor collecting practices, environmental degradation, human development, or other restrictions. For me, I've found that Instagram (30%), YouTube (15%), the Fossil Forum (5%), and Facebook (50%) have all contributed in some way to the degradation of the common stream systems (I put % weights next to these corresponding to my estimates of their impact). This degradation takes the form of too many people collecting in the streams. Some of these people dig in areas they shouldn't, such as the stream embankments, and this increases the risk of certain areas having fossil collecting banned. Many of these people litter the gravel bars with their sifted spoils, which prevents other collectors who want to surface scan from reaping the benefits of a good rain, which is the only reliable form of natural erosion for the NJ Cretaceous stream beds. Kind Regards, Trevor