In article ,
"Colin Davidson" writes:
|
| True enough. And I entirely agree, it's better to think of plants as part of
| populations than as individuals, but I've seen whole local populations of
| plants wiped out by plant hunting gardeners. I've seen a small, town based
| nature reserve stripped of cowslips. I've seen whole populations of
| strawberries ripped out of woodlands. Is it not worth preventing that?

And I have seen whole areas denuded of those by habitat destruction,
with the probable loss of the local variants. Is it not worth trying
to prevent that?

| That perhaps the right to move wild plants ought to be restricted for the
| landowners (depending on what the plants are and what changes are planned)
| is a different argument to whether anyone at all should be able to remove
| plants.

You are being forgetful. The excuse for the Act was conservation
grounds. If that had been a genuine reason, the law would have been
changed to address the main abuses and not to do other things as well.

| I'd also argue that the public (whoever they are) have also got a right to
| enjoy a rich, diverse flora. That right can be in opposition to the right to
| take plants from the wild; so there's no absolute right and wrong here that
| can be applied.

Then you should be supporting me in regarding that Act as anathema!
Its faults include precisely those of applying SINGLE-SIDED absolute
rules.

| 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.
|
| I haven't read that bit of the act, so I'll have to take your word for that.

Much of the point is that there ISN'T such a bit ....

| I dunno, maybe I just have less faith in the typical gardener to make a
| responsible decision than you do.

Perhaps I have less faith that making wild plants comparable to game
in legal status is going to help landowners and others make responsible
decisions than you do.

| These are, of course, important issues. I simply don't accept that allowing
| people to take wild plants is going to solve them.

I didn't say that it would. I said that the Act as it was passed is
goint to make them worse.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.