My 2 cents on this one: In very small part, some countries are very
possessive about their native orchids. E.g., Belize issues salvage permits
for the collection of orchids in areas scheduled to be logged, but the
inspectors don't like to pass Enc. cochleata because it's their national
flower. And if you don't have an export permit from the country of origin,
you shouldn't get an iimport permit from the US. But, when not in flower,
Enc. cochleata looks very much like a couple other Encyclia species ... and
if labelled as one of those others, it will probably get permitted out, and
therefore in. Likewise with Peru and kovachii.

The bigger issue is, to my mind, more bureaucratic stupidity, and lack of
funding, rather than political. Orchids (and other plants) somehow got
lumped in with animals, in CITES, even though very different considerations
apply. Also, the inspectors don't generally know much about orchids (some
are better than others, but as civil servants, even the idiots have what
appears to be life tenure). So, they make a lot of mistakes -- sometimes
passing mislabelled plants (which can happen innocently -- I can't
positively tell Schomb brysiana from Schomb. tibicinis when they're not in
flower -- it's not always intentional smuggling), sometimes turning away
perfectly legitimate shipments, at great expense to all involved. Customs
couldn't possibly afford to hire experts for this job (nor would any of us
want to pay the taxes if they did), which means they also aren't likely to
be able to tell the difference between an artificially-propagated clone or
selfing or sibcross of Orchid X from an illegally wild-collected Orchid X,
especially if the latter had been cleaned up with a few months of nursery
growth. So rather than take the chance of a few illegal wild collections
getting through, they ban the whole thing, or at least make it very
difficult to move even the artificially-propagated plants. Which is counter
to the purpose of the whole thing, because if the propagations were readily
available, most people wouldn't want the wild-collected plants.

We have a similar thing going on near us here in South Florida. Acres and
acres of land around us are being cleared for new developments, and there
are LOTS of our Florida native, Enc. tampensis, in the trees that are being
cut down. But the authorities will only issue salvage permits to
non-profit groups, and the only two I know of that have actually gotten such
permits don't have the funds or personnel to actually go rescue the plants.
So all these orchids are being destroyed, rather than letting professional
growers go collect them.

If I could get such a permit, I would go get them. Yes, I would sell most
of them -- I am, at least theoretically, a for-profit business. But I would
be pleased to donate a reasonable percentage of them to an institution that
would preserve them -- another resource that's in short supply, I assume for
lack of funding. And even the ones I sold would have a better prognosis
than just being destroyed in the clearing process. Most customers who buy
that type of plant naturalize them in their trees, where they even have some
chance of spreading naturally. But I'm told it's an enforcement issue --
the authorities have no way of telling whether the plants came from areas
being cleared, or protected areas, so they've chosen to just not allow it.
Kenni





"jamiemtl" wrote in message
oups.com...
ok - so after searching through orchid digest and other forums it
appears that people in the Orchid Community think that anti-smuggling
laws are garbage. There has been a hidden undertone as to the
"political reasons" for the ban and trade or orchids. Any hint as to
what these are??