Policy of the International Odonatological Society concerning faunistic surveys and publication of distributional records

The increasing reluctance of some dragonfly students to take care of a reasonable specimen documentation of their records is bound to cause the introduction of taxonomic errors into the literature. The number of papers based solely on sight or otherwise unqualified records is increasing alarmingly, while taxonomy and systematics are losing ground in many university teaching schemes throughout the world, and many young recorders, "ecologists" and conservancy activists lack adequate training in the methods of systematics. In addition, in some countries nature conservancy legislation makes a sound faunistic recording a difficult, if not almost impossible task, involving time-consuming administrative procedures and in this way causing much of the odonate survey work to remain de facto undocumented, hence potentially unreliable. The Odonata Specialist Group of the Species Survival Commission of the I.U.C.N. (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources), in their Chur meeting of August 16, 1981, has expressed the conviction that generalised legislation, preventing collection of all or most dragonfly species, will rather counteract their protection. The membership of the International Odonatological Society is likewise concerned about the increasing difficulties in making reliable inventories of local faunas, mainly caused by erroneous evaluation of the threats to which dragonflies and their habitats in the man-influenced world are exposed.