In article ,
Colin Davidson wrote:
"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...

But when you think about it a bit more deeply, it is a very BAD
idea. It would apply to truffles if the lawyers regarded them
as plants. The following are major disadvantages:

1) The law is phrased in such a way as to create property
rights that did not exist previously. Yes, the landowner can
assign and sell the permission, just as for game. This is yet
another theft of rights from the public, like the game laws and
enclosures.

Should the public have the right to uproot a wild plant from someone elses
land? Taking a part of the plant in such a way as to not kill it is one
thing. Removing it and putting it somewhere else is another.

It is a mistake to think of most plants as individuals - they are
part of a population. My point here was that a public right that had
existed from time immemorial, and had been enshrined in English law
for nearly two millennia, was taken away and given to the 'landowners'.
Exactly as with the Norman game laws and the Enclosures Acts.

2) The law does nothing to help protect plants against the
real abusers. There are many ways in which it can be bypassed,
from slipping the landowner some cash (which is legal) to many
effective illegal methods.

True enough. The landowner does still have the right to allow someone to dig
up roots. Or he can do it himself. And were I to choose to dig up some
horseradish roots from the wild I'm sure I'd get away with it. Were I to dig
up some wild strawberries and take them home for my garden I'd get away with
it. I choose not to, though. But does the fact that I would get away with it
mean that it should be legal?

Not necessarily, in itself. But why should the public's rights be
taken away and given to a small group of people without compensation?

Furthermore, the Act is written in such a way that it will be almost
impossible to prosecute people who take plants without permission and
for gain. I can see lots of loopholes, and there was and is no attempt
to assist enforceability.

3) It prevents people from stocking their property with local
strains of trees and shrubs, thus reducing biodiversity, and even
threatening the very plants the law is claimed to protect! Think
bluebells for an example, and see Rackham.

A fair point; but do we want people raiding their local woods for wild
bluebells?

YES. YES! A THOUSAND TIMES, YES, YES, YES!!!!!

You say that you think ecologically - THEN DO SO!

For the many plants that are almost entirely endangered by habitat
loss and/or predation by deer etc., one of the best hopes of their
long-term survival and maintenance of genetic variation is for them
to be naturalised in gardens, small areas of woodland and so on.
It is probably the ONLY HOPE for the maintenance of the local strains
of such such plants.

God help us, the result of this Act will be to encourage conservation
by the naturalisation of British Standard wildflower strains, with
perhaps half-a-dozen inbred ones of each species. And, of course, the
hybridisation with imported species, as the Hobdens point out.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.