GardenBanter.co.uk - [IBC] New Import Restrictions?

Hello,
I hope everyone is having a nice Spring!
I've posted a number of questions to the list since I joined a
month or so ago but have been hesitant to reply just to say thank
you when someone helps me with a question. I've felt rude for
this, so here's huge THANK YOU to everyone that has taken time to
answer any of my Q's. I appreciate it very much.
============
In general it is best to thank individuals via private
e-mail, though a blanket "thanks" as you do here is OK. Just try
not to send individual thank-yous to the list. We don't need to
read them. ;-)
=============
Now, why has the import of bonsai from some countries been
haulted? Was it because of a specific incident or was it done out
of precaution? After all the talk about bugs, pesticides and
plant diseases I've gotten curious about this and thought it
might be interesting to learn about. Is it a routine thing?
============
Ohboy! One of my favorite soapboxes.

The USA (and, frankly, most other countries) has done a
perfectly awful job of protecting its natural plant environments.
(It hasn't been too hot in its efforts to protect its
agricultural productivity, either -- even through MOST of our
agricultural crops are themselves imports to this hemisphere
(corn being a major exception).

Back in the early 90s, the last estimate that _I_ know of was
made of the *economic* damage exotic plants and animals caused to
natural systems and to agricultural productivity in the United
States alone. I quote from "Life Out Of Bounds: Bioinvasion in a
Borderless World": " . . . a baseline estimate of the economic
damage done by 79 major invasions into the country during the
course of this century: $97 billion. And since that figure only
includes losses that OTA (Office of technology Assessment) was
able to document, it is probably just a small fraction of the
losses actually inflicted."

These invasions range from Dutch elm disease, through
chestnut blight, various fruit fly invasions, a host of beetles,
weevils, and other plant-eating critters, lampreys and zebra
mussels, giant snails, walking catfish, and one of the more
recent ones, the Oriental longhorn beetle that seems to be one of
the causes for the USDA to finally tighten up on its plant import
regulations. The beetle's most common means in ingress to this
country has been in wooden packing crates, but reportedly it had
also come in on various bonsai -- mostly from China, I think. It
has been raising havoc in urban woodlots in a tier of northern
states; I haven't heard of it appearing in the south or
southwest -- yet.

As usual, however, though the regulations and the rhetoric
have gotten tougher, the money to implement them has gotten
considerably smaller. Our gummimint isn't willing to put its
money where its mouth is. Regulations do NOT enforce themselves,
and unless there are ample agricultural inspectors at all ports
of entry and International airports, and major post offices,
these regulations won't be effective.

Still, many exporters of bonsai will be unwilling to meet the
nearly sterile growing requirements imposed upon them for at
least 2 years before a tree is exported to the USA.

Frankly, I'm not put out by any lack of imported trees.
Seldom do exporting countries let any really good stuff leave
their borders. This is as true in the world of bonsai as it is
in the world of horses -- the other import-export are I know a
little about. And we will only develop our own bonsai skills
over here by starting from scratch (and IMHO with our own trees).

Anyway, tougher import restrictions are a good thing for our
environment as well as for the agricultural base of our economy.
They are less good, however, because we're too cheap to enforce
them.

Here is info about importing plants into the US -- including a
list of genera that CAN be imported:
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/ppq/permit...rsery.html#faq

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - Our life is
frittered away by detail . . . . Simplify! Simplify. -- Henry
David Thoreau - Walden

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