As long as there is demand from rich collectors, there will be poaching.
Whether or not there is also legal collecting is irrelevant. It would take
more than a few years for artificial propagation to make any dent in the
pressure to collect wild plants, and then people would still do it as long
as it was profitable. The poachers probably only give the local collectors
a few pennies per plant. I don't blame the local people for collecting
plants to feed their families. The government could probably pay the locals
a lot more to collect them legally and then export them, but that's up to
the individual governments. Many of them want to develop local orchid
nurseries to be the official suppliers for these species, and I don't blame
them. What's wrong with keeping some of the profit locally? The system in
Peru is slowly starting to work, there are legal plants in the U.S. from one
of the Peruvian suppliers and another one should come on line sometime soon.
[By the way, I think you got me mixed up with someone else when you were
talking about having people collect them and turn them over to the
government. I don't think I've ever said that.]

I just get tired of all of the anti-CITES griping, especially when much of
what gets said is false. CITES does not completely stop the trade of
orchids. CITES Appendix 1 plants can be legally imported under the right
conditions. Local laws that stop orchids from being collected are
completely separate from CITES, which only regulates international trade.
CITES has never been the cause of an orchid extinction, and most likely
never will be. It's highly unlikely that either Pk or Paph. vietnamense has
been eradicated in the wild (although Paph. vietnamense has probably had
more damage done to the wild population than Pk, which will probably be
discovered at more sites.) Many (not all) of the anti-CITES people don't
really care about stopping extinction of a species, they just want one of
the restricted plants for their collection. At least with CITES in place
there is a mechanism available for prosecuting the people that are causing
all of the poaching, the collectors in the more developed regions of the
world that are willing to pay the high prices to get the plants smuggled.

It will be interesting to see if there are second generation line-bred Pk's
that get released as flasked seedlings when the legal ones get more common.
I'm sure there are already people breeding with their illegal collected
plants. Once the artificially propagated plants are demonstrably better
than the wild ones, then some of the collecting pressure may ease.

-danny

"Kenni Judd" wrote in message
...
Danny:

1. CITES has been around, and applicable to orchids, for a VERY long time
now.

2. CITES has NOT prevented the situation Reka posted about, nor many,
many, other similar situations. And it won't, as long as the only way to
own such species is illegal, because those who really want them and can
pay are going to get them anyway -- at inflated prices, due to the
illegality, which only increases the motivation of the locals to go
harvest them for high (to them) pay. Viet Nam is a 3d world country. I
don't know the average hourly wage, but I'll be very surprised if it's as
much as US$1/hour. Anybody know?

The vast majority of the people involved in this illegal trade, especially
the native collectors and the ultimate purchasers, will never get caught,
and they know it. Leaving aside the question of guilt or innocence, the
prosecutions of Norris and Kovach are exceptions, not the rule. I haven't
seen anything on any of Norris' _customers_ being prosecuted, and I doubt
anyone could even find the "collectors" or their names, so as to prosecute
them, if anyone were interested in doing so. This has always been true,
but is even more so now and for the last few years when the various and
assorted "international police" agencies are being required to concentrate
so heavily on terrorism.

3. Had there been reasonable "exceptions," back in 1996 when this
particular species was "re-discovered," a commercial grower or two could
have taken A FEW plants for further propagation. Had such grower(s) been
allowed to do that back in 1996, then there most likely would have been
legal flasks on the market by 1998-1999, legal seedlings in another year
or two, and by now legal flowering-size plants. All
artificially-propagated, so that the vast majority of potential parents
left back in the wild could keep on growing and re-seeding.

There are probably still a few people who would want the illegal
wild-collected plants just for the "thrill" of it, even at a premium
price, but the major demand could have been supplied from the
artificially-propagated plants referenced above, the "illegal" premium
would be reduced as a result, thus reducing the pay of the native
collectors, and IMHO a lot more of them would still be growing in the
wild.

You have mentioned before, the idea of having knowledgeable people going
out to collect some specimens in cases like this, and turning them over to
some gov't agency/bureaucracy. This will never accomplish the goal. The
folks with the expertise are not going to donate their time and energy
just to turn the plants over to a regime that will almost certainly kill
them before any viable seed is produced, and even if they did, the goal
can't be accomplished without that viable seed and the expertise/$$ to
turn that seed into actual plants. To work, such a program has to be
given to someone with both the expertise and a strong financial motivation
to make it work. Civil servants don't get fired for incompetence; they
usually get promoted! But entrepreneurs can't afford to fail very often
...

One final thought: I would very much prefer to see these species continue
to grow in the wild, at least until their "wild" is
burned/cleared/bulldozed. But if that truly CAN'T be achieved, then I
would rather seem them grow "in captivity" than become totally extinct.
Kenni