Heiko Bleher arrested in Brazil !

rachenbrazil

rachenbrazil

Member
Dear Folks

Due Brazilian laws against biopiracy , mr. Heiko Bleher is in jail since aug 29 ,

http://noticias.uol.com.br/album/080829_album.jhtm?abrefoto=30
He is one of most important person for aquarilogy in whole world. I don´t know how to help him and Natascha now , but if anyone know their families and how to help them , please forward this message.

UNfortunally Brazilian laws and marshalls does not know this important man for us , so please help him !


Spread these words...

Thanks a lot

Reinaldo
 
Basically it sounds like he was caught trying to export fish from the Amazon and profit from breeding them. Most of his work has been exploring the jungles in S. America and discovering new fish, many of which he then takes back to Europe and breeds for the aquarium hobby. If he was breeding them in-country for export or simply collecting a few fish and using them for research I don't think there would be any issue (assuming he had the correct permits). What the laws are designed to prevent is people coming into the country and collecting specimens and then taking them back home and profiting- pretty much what he's been doing for decades now. The problem is that he's discovering things and taking them out of Brazil and then all the money they generate is going to people outside of Brazil. Basically, they're being screwed out of profiting from their own natural resources.

Imagine if you gave someone permission to pick wildflowers on your property and then they discovered a rare new species there that's found nowhere else. Without telling you, they collect some of the few existing individuals and propagate them back at their house. After they make thousands of dollars on the endeavor you catch wind of what's going on, but they refuse to give you a share of the money. I don't think most people would consider that a very fair situation.
 
By that logic, ORA, Tropicorium, and anyone else (including a lot of people on here) doing propagation/breeding outside of the South Pacific could all be thrown in jail as well.
 
But how many corals that are propagated by hobbyists or related businesses are rare new species?
 
Biopiracy is hardly ever cut and dry, but there are a few criteria that are generally looked at to determine if there's a case- 1.) Is the organism/ knowledge newly discovered or unique (usually meaning endemic) to the source of origin? 2.) Does the source realize what's being taken and the intent of the taker? 3.) Was the source compensated?

I don't know the details about this case since they're mostly in Portuguese, but it sounds like the Brazilians didn't know what he was collecting and hadn't given him permission to take their unique species and profit from them. I'm not sure what species he tried to take this time, but in the past he's taken species that were new to science.

I don't know any hobbyists who are going to other countries and collecting unique species for the purpose of bringing them home and propagating them. Neither is Tropicorium. I don't know where ORA's fish originally came from, but most don't meet the uniqueness criteria. They also grow a lot of their inverts in the country of origin.

For the most part we're using common species with wide distributions. The big one though is that we're paying collectors and exporters in the country of origin. They're being compensated and they know what's being exported (at least to the degree that they choose to identify the livestock) and they know what it's being exported for.
 
it's probably just new politics. the brazilians didn't mind when he, axelrod, burgess, et. al. helped put a good portion of the eco-tourism dollars into the economy by their discoveries starting back in the 60's and 70's.
 
Alive or dead makes no difference under the law. Most of the cases that brought about the international treaty on the issue were with preserved plants or animals. He's clearly been involved with biopiracy in the past and apparently the government has been waiting to catch him for a while. Being caught with more animals without the proper permits certainly didn't help his case, regardless of what shape they were in. They have no way of knowing what he planned to do with them. His response doesn't impress me much either, especially this gem, "Or that from the genetic material can be extract a lot of money... what a joke, from dead small fishes?" That's not a ridiculous claim at all. That is exactly the type of work that brought about the law. Brazil has been a party to the CBD since 1994, so this should hardly be a surprise, regardless of how many times he's gotten away with it since then. Regardless of how great his past contributions have been, how nice a guy he is, or how innocent his intentions were, doesn't change the fact that he allegedly broke the law.
 
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Brazil is a country currently working diligently on one hand to preserve it's aquatic biodiversity from over overcollection and potential decimation, while the other hand frantically pushes through legislation to dam up the same rivers and kill it themselves, rather than share the glory. The Belo Monte dam project has been approved for a few years now and will totally wipe out the very zebra plecos that they banned from export a few years ago to give them a chance to "recover" from overfishing. Some of those laws are pushed through by people that have neither a care or a clue about what's actually happening, and it wouldn't stop the process if they did! Electricity for starving families is going to take precedence over some striped fish potentially being lost forever from a political standpoint.

IBAMA is currently working on a few projects, including looking into aquaculture to preserve these species, but they're far from a done deal. As they've tightened the restrictions on exporting unidentified species (Brazil has a "white list", or a list of fish allowable to export, not actually a "banned" list), we're seeing more and more of the zebras and rarer plecos arriving in the country here again. I can only assume that it's because they forced so many wholesalers to figure out what to do with all the fish they'd collected and were unable to legally sell that they then worked around the system to get those same fish to Peru. Once they figured out a work around, why not collect and sell the fish that are worth the most money? The ethics of buying any of those fish has been discussed at great length at http://www.zebrapleco.com but we can never come to an actual decision on whether or not it's more ethical to let these endangered little guys die in the hands of someone less inclined to perpetuate them, or if we should go ahead and buy all that come available. It's not illegal on our end, but without our end of things, there wouldn't be a reason for them to export them. Economics have forced the cost of tank raised species up over $150 for a 1" fish. They WILL sell, so how do you decide what's best?

I am all for a countries right to protect it's native livestock, but in Brazil's case, I do honestly feel it's just 6 of 1, half a dozen of the other. They are essentially protecting them so they can kill them themselves when a gov't agency gets organized enough to fund those dam projects.

Barbie
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13265084#post13265084 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by greenbean36191
Basically it sounds like he was caught trying to export fish from the Amazon and profit from breeding them. Most of his work has been exploring the jungles in S. America and discovering new fish, many of which he then takes back to Europe and breeds for the aquarium hobby. If he was breeding them in-country for export or simply collecting a few fish and using them for research I don't think there would be any issue (assuming he had the correct permits). What the laws are designed to prevent is people coming into the country and collecting specimens and then taking them back home and profiting- pretty much what he's been doing for decades now. The problem is that he's discovering things and taking them out of Brazil and then all the money they generate is going to people outside of Brazil. Basically, they're being screwed out of profiting from their own natural resources.

Imagine if you gave someone permission to pick wildflowers on your property and then they discovered a rare new species there that's found nowhere else. Without telling you, they collect some of the few existing individuals and propagate them back at their house. After they make thousands of dollars on the endeavor you catch wind of what's going on, but they refuse to give you a share of the money. I don't think most people would consider that a very fair situation.
Click to expand...
Wow, alittle harsh. If he WAS taking fish out of Brazil to breed for the hobby, it sure beats wild collection. Just about every F/W fish people keep was new and exciting when it was discovered, then people brought them to the U.S and Europe and began diligently trying to breed them. It always starts somewhere. If the fish ARE rare then breeding them would not only help the hobby but the species as well. Many F/W fish that are kept in just about every pet store in the U.S are either extinict in the wild or severly threatend. Brazil is just clamping down incredibly on fish collection, but what I wonder is why don't they worry as much about the deforestation of the Amazon?!? In this world there will always be ways to profit off of others if this was his intention, who knows, were his intentions purely noble by bringing a new fish into the market place while insuring its longevity? Again no one knows, except him.
 
"Brazil is just clamping down incredibly on fish collection, but what I wonder is why don't they worry as much about the deforestation of the Amazon?!? "

Thats because collectors are easy targets compared to loggers.
Like in Australia where collecting is over regulated while sugar mills silt up the Great Barrier Reef causing more damage on a single rainy day then their collectors do in a century.

The new "greenie" seems to be a coward in many places. Selectively boosting his own career on the smallest targets with the most sensation potential....and hiding from or conveniently ignoring the big guys who can afford legal teams and better political defense.

This trend is ominous as it suggests a future where we pretend to save the environment from token little battles while avoiding the real war.
Steve
 
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