After reading 'Turf war wrecks expedition' (#275) the question arises why a program with such a positive mission was done without legal permission. A program of global interest and importance was started only with verbal approval from an official of the Ministry. This shows the arrogance and carelessness of Conservation International and The Mountain Institute towards our national laws and legislation. CI says its intention was not to collect samples, yet another member of the expedition is quoted as saying all collected samples were returned to the habitat. These are contradictory statements. Scientists do not have the right to think even mistakenly that permission was just a formality. It is appreciable that the government stood its ground and cancelled the permit. Nepal has the potential to produce experts in various fields who can explore our natural resources ourselves. It may take some time but the day will surely come when scientists from our own land discover our resources and make them public. Till then, it is the responsibility of the government to protect the national resources for future generations. So, Nepal has not lost anything.

Sapana Lohani,
Tribhuban University

. It is fortunate that the government acted in time to save Nepal's nature from illegal sample collection. We can't let science be trampled and our natural resources plundered by whoever has money and clout. The lessons learnt from the potential bio-piracy implications of this expedition are to sort our the authorship and collection issues beforehand and to repeat such a blunder again. We should be more devoted to contributing our knowledge to science that helps us understand the complexity of our own biological diversity first.

Apar Paudyal,
Central Department of Environmental Science