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Old 06-04-2005, 07:02 PM
 
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Default from today's NYT

April 6, 2005
Call 911-Flowers! Lives Are at Risk
By GLENN COLLINS

he dangerously bedraggled illegals were immediately quarantined when
they arrived from the Philippines at Miami International Airport last
month. For all of their value and their rarity, the immediate prognosis
was dire.

The unlawful arrivals were not endangered parrots, exotic jungle cats
or any other imperiled animal. They were orchids - more than 1,100 of
them and they had literally been ripped from the wild. Now their new
neighborhood could not be more different from their native cloud
forest: the threatened orchids are receiving intensive care in the
Bronx, clinging to life so stubbornly that most may survive.

The chronicle of their rescue provides a rare look at a ceaseless war
between importers and federal enforcement agencies that has led to the
seizure of more than 40,000 contraband plants in the last five years.
The primary reason for this struggle is to safeguard America's
agriculture from pests and diseases. But after that scrutiny, many
endangered specimens have been saved by the efforts of government
agencies, nonprofit institutions, scientists and volunteers.

Teams of plant experts across the nation are regularly called upon to
rescue plants and nurse them back to health, ultimately attempting to
preserve their gene lines. "These unfortunate imports are like people
trying to cross the border illegally," said Dr. Kim E. Tripp, director
of the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, where the 1,100 seized
orchids were sent. "We drop everything and try to save them."

The huge shipment of orchids from the Philippines, which arrived in
Miami on March 10, had been crammed into a dozen unlabeled cardboard
boxes. Like all such arrivals, they were inspected by the United States
Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
at the Miami airport. Although the orchids seemed free of pests, an
alert botanist realized that the plants' entry permit had been
falsified, according to T. Mark Thurmond, the chief plant safeguarding
and pest identification specialist for the Agriculture Department's
inspection service office in Riverdale, Md.

While the shipment's paperwork said that the orchids were artificially
cultivated, "clearly these were wild orchids," Mr. Thurmond said. So
the orchids were seized under the provisions of a 1975 international
treaty intended to curb the trafficking of endangered animals and
plants that have come from the wild.

The Agriculture Department declined to disclose the name of the
shipment's importer or other details about the seizure because the
investigation is continuing, Mr. Thurmond said. Under federal
plant-protection laws, the government can levy fines of $1,000 to
$500,000, and, if there is evidence of criminal intent, can refer the
case to prosecutors.

The Agriculture Department, as it is required to do, notified the
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which is responsible for
finding emergency shelter for contraband animals or plants. On March
15, Monica Powell, a biologist with the service, telephoned the
Botanical Garden and asked whether it could accept the orchids.

Since 1990, the Botanical Garden has been federally designated as one
of 73 plan-rescue centers in the country. Ms. Powell's phone call could
not have come at a worse time, since the horticultural staff was
toiling on the Botanical Garden's popular orchid show, which ended
March 27. "But conservation takes precedence for us," said Todd
Forrest, an associate vice president who is in charge of the
horticultural division.

The illicit shipment was "among the top five largest of the last
decade," said Mark Albert, a biologist in the division of management
authority at the Fish and Wildlife Service. According to Mr. Albert, in
the last five years 1,327 seized plant shipments, totaling 42,086
plants, have gone to the nation's rescue centers. Seventy-eight percent
of the plants were orchids, 14 percent were cacti, and the other 8
percent included cycads, aloes and carnivorous plants.

On March 18, the plant shipment arrived at the Botanical Garden from
Miami. The orchids were quarantined in the garden's Propagation Range,
a greenhouse complex, to protect the institution's collections from
contamination.

"It was a race against time, since some of the plants were dehydrated
and near death," said Marc Hachadourian, the gardener for the
institution's permanent collection of 7,000 orchids.

He and the curator for greenhouse collections, Darrin Duling, along
with three volunteers, immediately began a process of triage,
"prioritizing as in a hospital emergency room, when you're dealing with
the wounded," Mr. Forrest said. Some 10 to 15 percent of the plants
were dead on arrival or could not be saved. "Others needed help
immediately," Mr. Forrest said.

The orchids were hardly a riotous rainbow as they came out of the
boxes. "We were appalled to see their condition," Mr. Hachadourian
said. "The orchids were wilted, torn, shriveled and severely
dehydrated, and there was a lot of mechanical damage [broken stems].
And they hadn't received any sunlight."

Some specimens were so jammed together "that they were sent to their
doom, crushed to death, simply by the way they had been packed," Mr.
Hachadourian said. "It was so depressing. As if you were discovering a
room full of tiger or leopard skins."

The collectors "knew what it was they wanted, and they didn't care what
they had to do to get it," Mr. Hachadourian said, holding up a
specimen. "They were clear-cutting orchids out of a section of forest,
and the danger is that they might remove an entire species." In some
cases, Mr. Hachadourian said, newly discovered species have been
"collected to extinction within a year."

Such rapaciousness is a more extreme form of the orchid poaching
depicted in the 2002 film "Adaptation," starring Chris Cooper as a
horticultural renegade arrested for collecting wild orchids from a
Florida swamp, based on Susan Orlean's 1999 book, "The Orchid Thief."

In the Bronx, the team began examining each specimen for dead or dying
leaves. So far, no insects or diseases have been discovered. But since
some plants had started to rot, sections of leaves and stalks were cut
off. "We're doing emergency amputation to save them," Mr. Hachadourian
said.

To rehydrate the orchids, workers began packing their roots with moist
sphagnum moss. "But we can't water them yet because that might
encourage pathogens and the plants are so stressed that they are
susceptible to them," Mr. Hachadourian said. It is also too soon to
expose them to sunlight now since they might burn and dehydrate. And
fertilizer would force them to grow, when they are not yet ready.

Orchids, fabled for their extravagant beauty, belong to the most highly
evolved and complex flowering-plant family, which has 30,000 wild
species. Some of the plants in the Miami shipment that have been
identified are worth $500 or more, and the entire collection could be
worth in the tens of thousands of dollars.

A few of the plants, called Vanda ustii, have only recently been
described by scientists. Among the other discoveries so far is a small
specimen of Grammatophyllum speciosum, a member of the world's largest
known orchid species that, when mature, can have plants weighing
several tons.

Many of the other seized specimens are "uncommonly large," Mr.
Hachadourian added. "It would take decades to get orchids of this size.
So ripping them out is like felling large, old trees in the forest."

When the orchids start flowering again, "we could find some that may be
new to science, since they've been yanked from trees in remote parts of
the rain forest," Dr. Tripp said.

The seized orchids will need a lot of T.L.C. "In the past, 80 to 90
percent have survived," Mr. Hachadourian said of previous rescues. "But
it's impossible to say how many of these will make it."

If rain forest destruction and population expansion continue, "these
orchids could someday be the only genetic survivors of those in the
wild," Mr. Hachadourian added.

Of the destiny of the orchids, which are on permanent loan from the
government, Dr. Tripp, said: "We are their stewards. We hold them as a
treasure in perpetuity, for everyone."



--j_a

  #2   Report Post  
Old 06-04-2005, 11:31 PM
Diana Kulaga
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Beat me to it! Read that this morning. It will be interesting to find out
who the sender and recipient were.

Diana


  #3   Report Post  
Old 06-04-2005, 11:42 PM
Ray
 
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I wonder who the consignee was...

--

Ray Barkalow - First Rays Orchids - www.firstrays.com
Plants, Supplies, Artwork, Books and Lots of Free Info!


wrote in message
oups.com...
April 6, 2005
Call 911-Flowers! Lives Are at Risk
By GLENN COLLINS

he dangerously bedraggled illegals were immediately quarantined when
they arrived from the Philippines at Miami International Airport last
month. For all of their value and their rarity, the immediate prognosis
was dire.

The unlawful arrivals were not endangered parrots, exotic jungle cats
or any other imperiled animal. They were orchids - more than 1,100 of
them and they had literally been ripped from the wild. Now their new
neighborhood could not be more different from their native cloud
forest: the threatened orchids are receiving intensive care in the
Bronx, clinging to life so stubbornly that most may survive.

The chronicle of their rescue provides a rare look at a ceaseless war
between importers and federal enforcement agencies that has led to the
seizure of more than 40,000 contraband plants in the last five years.
The primary reason for this struggle is to safeguard America's
agriculture from pests and diseases. But after that scrutiny, many
endangered specimens have been saved by the efforts of government
agencies, nonprofit institutions, scientists and volunteers.

Teams of plant experts across the nation are regularly called upon to
rescue plants and nurse them back to health, ultimately attempting to
preserve their gene lines. "These unfortunate imports are like people
trying to cross the border illegally," said Dr. Kim E. Tripp, director
of the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, where the 1,100 seized
orchids were sent. "We drop everything and try to save them."

The huge shipment of orchids from the Philippines, which arrived in
Miami on March 10, had been crammed into a dozen unlabeled cardboard
boxes. Like all such arrivals, they were inspected by the United States
Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
at the Miami airport. Although the orchids seemed free of pests, an
alert botanist realized that the plants' entry permit had been
falsified, according to T. Mark Thurmond, the chief plant safeguarding
and pest identification specialist for the Agriculture Department's
inspection service office in Riverdale, Md.

While the shipment's paperwork said that the orchids were artificially
cultivated, "clearly these were wild orchids," Mr. Thurmond said. So
the orchids were seized under the provisions of a 1975 international
treaty intended to curb the trafficking of endangered animals and
plants that have come from the wild.

The Agriculture Department declined to disclose the name of the
shipment's importer or other details about the seizure because the
investigation is continuing, Mr. Thurmond said. Under federal
plant-protection laws, the government can levy fines of $1,000 to
$500,000, and, if there is evidence of criminal intent, can refer the
case to prosecutors.

The Agriculture Department, as it is required to do, notified the
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which is responsible for
finding emergency shelter for contraband animals or plants. On March
15, Monica Powell, a biologist with the service, telephoned the
Botanical Garden and asked whether it could accept the orchids.

Since 1990, the Botanical Garden has been federally designated as one
of 73 plan-rescue centers in the country. Ms. Powell's phone call could
not have come at a worse time, since the horticultural staff was
toiling on the Botanical Garden's popular orchid show, which ended
March 27. "But conservation takes precedence for us," said Todd
Forrest, an associate vice president who is in charge of the
horticultural division.

The illicit shipment was "among the top five largest of the last
decade," said Mark Albert, a biologist in the division of management
authority at the Fish and Wildlife Service. According to Mr. Albert, in
the last five years 1,327 seized plant shipments, totaling 42,086
plants, have gone to the nation's rescue centers. Seventy-eight percent
of the plants were orchids, 14 percent were cacti, and the other 8
percent included cycads, aloes and carnivorous plants.

On March 18, the plant shipment arrived at the Botanical Garden from
Miami. The orchids were quarantined in the garden's Propagation Range,
a greenhouse complex, to protect the institution's collections from
contamination.

"It was a race against time, since some of the plants were dehydrated
and near death," said Marc Hachadourian, the gardener for the
institution's permanent collection of 7,000 orchids.

He and the curator for greenhouse collections, Darrin Duling, along
with three volunteers, immediately began a process of triage,
"prioritizing as in a hospital emergency room, when you're dealing with
the wounded," Mr. Forrest said. Some 10 to 15 percent of the plants
were dead on arrival or could not be saved. "Others needed help
immediately," Mr. Forrest said.

The orchids were hardly a riotous rainbow as they came out of the
boxes. "We were appalled to see their condition," Mr. Hachadourian
said. "The orchids were wilted, torn, shriveled and severely
dehydrated, and there was a lot of mechanical damage [broken stems].
And they hadn't received any sunlight."

Some specimens were so jammed together "that they were sent to their
doom, crushed to death, simply by the way they had been packed," Mr.
Hachadourian said. "It was so depressing. As if you were discovering a
room full of tiger or leopard skins."

The collectors "knew what it was they wanted, and they didn't care what
they had to do to get it," Mr. Hachadourian said, holding up a
specimen. "They were clear-cutting orchids out of a section of forest,
and the danger is that they might remove an entire species." In some
cases, Mr. Hachadourian said, newly discovered species have been
"collected to extinction within a year."

Such rapaciousness is a more extreme form of the orchid poaching
depicted in the 2002 film "Adaptation," starring Chris Cooper as a
horticultural renegade arrested for collecting wild orchids from a
Florida swamp, based on Susan Orlean's 1999 book, "The Orchid Thief."

In the Bronx, the team began examining each specimen for dead or dying
leaves. So far, no insects or diseases have been discovered. But since
some plants had started to rot, sections of leaves and stalks were cut
off. "We're doing emergency amputation to save them," Mr. Hachadourian
said.

To rehydrate the orchids, workers began packing their roots with moist
sphagnum moss. "But we can't water them yet because that might
encourage pathogens and the plants are so stressed that they are
susceptible to them," Mr. Hachadourian said. It is also too soon to
expose them to sunlight now since they might burn and dehydrate. And
fertilizer would force them to grow, when they are not yet ready.

Orchids, fabled for their extravagant beauty, belong to the most highly
evolved and complex flowering-plant family, which has 30,000 wild
species. Some of the plants in the Miami shipment that have been
identified are worth $500 or more, and the entire collection could be
worth in the tens of thousands of dollars.

A few of the plants, called Vanda ustii, have only recently been
described by scientists. Among the other discoveries so far is a small
specimen of Grammatophyllum speciosum, a member of the world's largest
known orchid species that, when mature, can have plants weighing
several tons.

Many of the other seized specimens are "uncommonly large," Mr.
Hachadourian added. "It would take decades to get orchids of this size.
So ripping them out is like felling large, old trees in the forest."

When the orchids start flowering again, "we could find some that may be
new to science, since they've been yanked from trees in remote parts of
the rain forest," Dr. Tripp said.

The seized orchids will need a lot of T.L.C. "In the past, 80 to 90
percent have survived," Mr. Hachadourian said of previous rescues. "But
it's impossible to say how many of these will make it."

If rain forest destruction and population expansion continue, "these
orchids could someday be the only genetic survivors of those in the
wild," Mr. Hachadourian added.

Of the destiny of the orchids, which are on permanent loan from the
government, Dr. Tripp, said: "We are their stewards. We hold them as a
treasure in perpetuity, for everyone."



--j_a



  #4   Report Post  
Old 07-04-2005, 06:24 AM
Susan Erickson
 
Posts: n/a
Default

On Wed, 6 Apr 2005 17:42:06 -0400, "Ray"
wrote:

I wonder who the consignee was...


I wonder why when they were seized on the 10th it took them 8
more days to get them to NY.
SuE
http://orchids.legolas.org/gallery/albums.php
  #5   Report Post  
Old 07-04-2005, 08:01 AM
Reka
 
Posts: n/a
Default

wrote:

Since 1990, the Botanical Garden has been federally designated as one
of 73 plan-rescue centers in the country. Ms. Powell's phone call could
not have come at a worse time, since the horticultural staff was
toiling on the Botanical Garden's popular orchid show, which ended
March 27. "But conservation takes precedence for us," said Todd
Forrest, an associate vice president who is in charge of the
horticultural division.




Orchids, fabled for their extravagant beauty, belong to the most highly
evolved and complex flowering-plant family, which has 30,000 wild
species. Some of the plants in the Miami shipment that have been
identified are worth $500 or more, and the entire collection could be
worth in the tens of thousands of dollars.

A few of the plants, called Vanda ustii, have only recently been
described by scientists. Among the other discoveries so far is a small
specimen of Grammatophyllum speciosum, a member of the world's largest
known orchid species that, when mature, can have plants weighing
several tons.


I especially like the modesty of the first paragraph here ("But
conservation takes precedence for us") in conjunction with the last two
paragraphs. How altruistic...I can see them drooling now.

--
Reka

This is LIFE! It's not a rehearsal. Don't miss it!
http://www.rolbox.it/hukari/index.html


  #6   Report Post  
Old 07-04-2005, 11:51 AM
Dave Gillingham
 
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One of my books refers to the early 1900s, when SE Asia was opening
up as a new source of exotic & previously unknown orchids - and there
were many wealthy collectors of anything unusual in Europe. Showed
pics of ships' holds full of epiphytes, ripped from trees. Probably
wouldn't survive the voyage back, & if they did, would die in the
European environment, where prospective buyers hadn't the faintest
idea of the plants' normal environment.

Dave Gillingham
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