I collect skulls as a hobby (as long as they are ethically sourced) and I don’t really need seven raccoon skulls (+ the baby I found last August, so eight) I think it would be cool to trade a few of them with other bone collectors, possibly people from all over the world, to get new species for my collection and share these (common to me) species with fellow bone enthusiasts. If I do trade with people, possible people from overseas, is this something CITES would allow? I see people selling bones on etsy so I think it would be fine, but I wanted to check nonetheless.
Assuming I can trade some skulls, does anyone have an idea on how this could be done? Should I post to the iNat Forum?
Thanks in advance. This is a bit of an odd question. If any of you who read this have a bunch of European deer species or cats/dogs or anything else lying around that you’d like to trade for a raccoon, feel free to DM me!
If you don’t want to keep everything you find, please consider donating to a local wildlife center or school where they can be used in teaching and educational outreach.
Internationally may be an issue…what if there is something harmful to the native ecosystem on it, if it hasn’t been cleaned and processed right? At very least id make sure of that from ethical standpoint.
Maybe taxidermy laws would be more helpful, the link above was living and dead organisms, not bone itself. Pretty sure clean bone is legal within the USPS system domestic but this is US centric of course. See: https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c3_024.htm#ep925037 and related page where it says as long as it is not defined as infectious per that, its fine to ship. Must be in airtight container within a container.
From that page, you can find this site for checking whether species you wish to transport are included on the CITES list : https://www.speciesplus.net/#/