jamiemtl wrote:
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??


Orchid Fever will have more detail on this, but wayyyy back in the 1970s
when the CITES treaty was being written it was originally written for
trade in endangered animals. As a last minute item someone asked "what
about plants?" and forgot that many plants (including orcids) are very
fast growing and easy to produce from seed. Unlike animals, who only
produce few young which are very slow growing by comparision. (Like
elephants, pandas or tigers)

What is ridiculous - where orchids are concerned - is that orchids can
be replicated by the thousands in tissue culture labs. Or seed pods
produce 100,000 of seed, so an endangered plant could very easily be
brought to market merely by collecting one seed pod, which may or may
not damage the environment. Market forces would keep the prices low
because many plants would be available to sell. Instaead, the law
forbids you to collect any part of an endangered species. Rarity forces
the prices sky high. Illegal trade abounds. How are you going to tell
someone in Papua New Guinea not to collect that rare orchid and sell it
for more money than they'd earn in a year?

Additionally, orchids in the way of highway projects, or in areas soon
to be flooded by dams you are forbidden to collect and save the orchids
in those areas unless you have the appropriate permits. Therefore what
was an attempt to save endangered species wound up killing them by the
thousands of individual plants.

Read Orchid Fever.

K

On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:16:53 +0100 in Reka wrote:
In article ,
says...

You might also want to talk with folks that have done seed smuggling
for seed banks.
I thought seeds were exempt from CITES, or are you just talking about
general smuggling of plant material into the States?

General smuggling of plant materials.


--
Chris Dukes
Suspicion breeds confidence -- Brazil

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??

OK as to Kovach and the phrag. As far as I know he didn't have any
paperwork at all. No import/export forms filled out correctly or
incorrectly, nothing, nada, zilch, zippo. As far as I know he was on
vacation, saw this plant in a roadside cart, grabbed it quick! and ran
for home.

Personally I think he was just so excited he just kept his mouth shut
about his discovery and got it home as fast as possible, gave it to
Selby for ID, said "name it for me" and split for home to dump is bags
and get cleaned up. Never thinking about CITES, only thinking he had
something no one had ever seen before! How exciting!

Then like you say the doodoo hit the fan and the rest is history.

I'm betting you are right about Peru waking up after the fact and
getting ticked off about the plant escaping their country. If that
hadn't happened I'll bet everyone concerned never would have had to
explain a thing.

Now, what you say about buying a plant labelled one way and having it
actually be something entirely other happens quite alot. Why isn't
*that* high crimes and misdemeanors? Just because its not a phrag?

K

Al wrote:
I understood that. I was not confused. I still have always wondered how
Kovach went wrong. Was he intentionally smuggling or was he in a gray area
where procedures were unclear. An unidentified new Phrag species. What did
he declare it was on his permits that allowed it to pass all the way to
Shelby and published as newly discovered before the doo-doo hits the big
blowing air machine? I am certain he knew he had a new species. I don't
know how the permits work on this level. Why didn't he present his new find
to Peruvian botanists? I always figured he took it to Shelby because Shelby
was the botany department he knew of that could do the work.

Your example is one way plants are smuggled, for sure. No names are needed.
I sometimes buy recently imported plants from American companies all the
time and get unbloomed orchids that bloom out to be other than what they
were sold to me as. I have something that came in labeled as Asctm
curvifolium and blooms out to be the weirdest little thing. In two
flowering now I have been unable to identify it. I don't have a good
picture of it yet. The flowers are pin-head sized brown and yellow. It is
clearly an orchid of some kind, and probably not new to science, just new to
me. I have received some rather rare Phal minus this way too. I bought
Phal gibbosa from a man who thought he was selling me Phal gibbosa and when
it bloomed and I asked him what it was, he wanted it back. No, I think I'll
keep for all those times I bought something rare (not necessarily from this
man) and got Phal equestris instead.


"K Barrett" wrote in message
. ..

I knew I'd confuse the issue by mentioning kovachii or any names at all.
I'm sorry I ever answered the original question. My answer was in regard
to HOW orchids could be smuggled using a CODE. Not about kovachii or
anything/anyone else. Substitute X and Y for plant names if you prefer.

K

Al wrote:

With kovachii, I am still a bit confused as to the order it all happened.
I don't think he was intentionally smuggling in the manner your
hypothetical example suggests it is done.

I have always assumed he had the correct specialized permits to
import/export already classified Phrags and that he broke the law kind of
by accident because it was an undescribed piece of plant material and
shouldn't have left Peru, no matter what kind of permit he had. I have
always kind of believed that the issue started when Peru discovered one
of their native plants had made it into the US to be described by a US
authority and that until then, nobody realized the treaty had this kind
of gray area in it that would allow undescribed material to be exported
so easily. It has always seemed to me that he was in a kind of gray area
and not at all doing what you describe below as smuggling. But my
assumptions are probably too simplified.

He and Selby broke the law, (as decided by the outcome of the court case)
but what should they have done differently? What would have been the
correct course of action for an American plant collector in Peru to take
after discovering a new species of Phrag? What should Selby have done
when this unimaginably serendipitous piece of plant material dropped in
their lap?

K Barrett" wrote in message
om...


jamiemtl wrote:


ok - so im now fascinated with Silva's and Norris' case. Apparently
they would get fake permits for legal orchids, then ship illegal ones
with these legit permits? It said on the US department of agriculture's
website that they even devised a code to determine what these orchids
were? Does anyone have any further information?


That's why I said this could become a life's work. Its a great story.

To answer your question about how this is done.

If you were to go to any orchid show you'd see orchids for sale, and
mostly they are out of bloom. Yous see just a mass of green plant
stuffs.

One out of bloom orchid plant - for the most part - looks like any other
orchid plant of the same variety. The way we tell them apart is by the
tag the vendor puts on the plant. For ease in labelling, vendors will
label their plants by number and have a master list as to what all the
numbers mean. Then when they get to where ever they are going they'll
put a better tag on the plant. So you'll see plants tagged '1167 Soph
cernua' and some just '1167' and you as teh purchaser have to know/ask
what '1167' is. Pretty much this is standard operating procedure, but to
a customs agent or a reporter looking for a story it could look like a
"code".

Nevertheless, the key to the crime is that one orchid looks pretty much
like another of the same variety when its out of bloom.

So, your cohort (in the country of origin) writes up a bunch of paperwork
saying you two are importing an easy to get plant like Phragmipedium
schlimii (an example only). He gets CITES & USFWS (endangered species)
permits to import Phrag schlimii. The paperwork says item #123 is Phrag
schlimii. But really item #123 is rare, sexy Phrag kovachii (an example
only), a plant people would kill for. The customs agents look over his
shipment, sees that a bunch of Phrags are coming in, but they really have
no idea WHAT they are because one out of bloom phrag looks pretty much
like another. You pick up the plants at the customs house. Your cohort
has emailed you the real list, stating #123 is kovachii. Bada bing!
You're in the money. You contact your friends who you know will want
the plants no matter what the cost, and you laugh all the way to the
bank. Unless you are George Norris, who - according the the feds - never
deleted his email or cleaned his hard drive and they found the trail.
Then you wind up in prison. Note: George wasn't busted for Phrag.
kovachii, Selby Gardens and Michael Kovach were, I just used those
species as an example.

I could go on, but its your homework, LOL!!

If you can figure out the OGD's search feature you should be able to find
Norris's own post about how the feds treated him when they served their
search warrant. I thought it was chilling.

You may also be able to find an account of how Eurpoean vendors filled
the back of a pick up truck with illegally collected Phrag kovachiis to
sell in Europe. I guess their customs agents are even worse than ours at
plant identification _ I'm kidding the story is more convoluted than
that, but there's only so much I can write at one time.

K Barrett

wow, this is amazing. i love it! i'm reading Orchid Fever right
now..and who knows, maybe by tomorrow I'll go out and by myself a few
orchids!!!

jamiemtl wrote:
wow, this is amazing. i love it! i'm reading Orchid Fever right
now..and who knows, maybe by tomorrow I'll go out and by myself a few
orchids!!!



Abandon all hope oh ye who enter here...

I occurs to me that you may not know what sorts of flowers we are
talking about.

I believe the first chapter of Orchid Fever opens in the jungles of
Papua New Guinea, with Eric Hansen explaining to a tribesman why he'll
spend more money that the tribesman can conceive of just to take
pictures of an orchid considered common to the tribesman... That orchid
is called Paphiopedilum sanderianum. The claim to fame of this orchid
are its petals that can grow alomst a yard in length.
http://www.orchidsonline.com.au/species1354.html

Here's one I found from Chuck Aker's page, I hope the link works.
http://www.flasksbychuckacker.com/im...erianumjm.html

and heres an itty bitty picture of how long the petals can get (small
photo off to the left) http://www.iosoc.com/forward-2/products.htm

The Phragmipedium kovachii from Peru can be seen he
http://autrevie.com/Articles/Phrag_kovachii.html

http://www.peruorchids.com/galeria/p...peruvianum.htm

Compare that to any of the other phrags and you'll see why its so hot.
http://www.paphiopedilum.org.uk/phragmipedium.htm

K Barrett

There was a short sidebar-like blurb in the AOS magazine "Orchids" several
months written by a CITES employee that said the Peruvian government had
issued export permits for flasks of kovachii to an American destination
....so it is already here in the US legally although where I'm sure I can't
say...

"K Barrett" wrote in message
. ..
OK as to Kovach and the phrag. As far as I know he didn't have any
paperwork at all. No import/export forms filled out correctly or
incorrectly, nothing, nada, zilch, zippo. As far as I know he was on
vacation, saw this plant in a roadside cart, grabbed it quick! and ran for
home.

Personally I think he was just so excited he just kept his mouth shut
about his discovery and got it home as fast as possible, gave it to Selby
for ID, said "name it for me" and split for home to dump is bags and get
cleaned up. Never thinking about CITES, only thinking he had something no
one had ever seen before! How exciting!

Then like you say the doodoo hit the fan and the rest is history.

I'm betting you are right about Peru waking up after the fact and getting
ticked off about the plant escaping their country. If that hadn't happened
I'll bet everyone concerned never would have had to explain a thing.

Now, what you say about buying a plant labelled one way and having it
actually be something entirely other happens quite alot. Why isn't *that*
high crimes and misdemeanors? Just because its not a phrag?

K

Al wrote:
I understood that. I was not confused. I still have always wondered how
Kovach went wrong. Was he intentionally smuggling or was he in a gray
area where procedures were unclear. An unidentified new Phrag species.
What did he declare it was on his permits that allowed it to pass all the
way to Shelby and published as newly discovered before the doo-doo hits
the big blowing air machine? I am certain he knew he had a new species.
I don't know how the permits work on this level. Why didn't he present
his new find to Peruvian botanists? I always figured he took it to
Shelby because Shelby was the botany department he knew of that could do
the work.

Your example is one way plants are smuggled, for sure. No names are
needed. I sometimes buy recently imported plants from American companies
all the time and get unbloomed orchids that bloom out to be other than
what they were sold to me as. I have something that came in labeled as
Asctm curvifolium and blooms out to be the weirdest little thing. In two
flowering now I have been unable to identify it. I don't have a good
picture of it yet. The flowers are pin-head sized brown and yellow. It
is clearly an orchid of some kind, and probably not new to science, just
new to me. I have received some rather rare Phal minus this way too. I
bought Phal gibbosa from a man who thought he was selling me Phal gibbosa
and when it bloomed and I asked him what it was, he wanted it back. No,
I think I'll keep for all those times I bought something rare (not
necessarily from this man) and got Phal equestris instead.


"K Barrett" wrote in message
. ..

I knew I'd confuse the issue by mentioning kovachii or any names at all.
I'm sorry I ever answered the original question. My answer was in regard
to HOW orchids could be smuggled using a CODE. Not about kovachii or
anything/anyone else. Substitute X and Y for plant names if you prefer.

K

Al wrote:

With kovachii, I am still a bit confused as to the order it all
happened. I don't think he was intentionally smuggling in the manner
your hypothetical example suggests it is done.

I have always assumed he had the correct specialized permits to
import/export already classified Phrags and that he broke the law kind
of by accident because it was an undescribed piece of plant material and
shouldn't have left Peru, no matter what kind of permit he had. I have
always kind of believed that the issue started when Peru discovered one
of their native plants had made it into the US to be described by a US
authority and that until then, nobody realized the treaty had this kind
of gray area in it that would allow undescribed material to be exported
so easily. It has always seemed to me that he was in a kind of gray
area and not at all doing what you describe below as smuggling. But my
assumptions are probably too simplified.

He and Selby broke the law, (as decided by the outcome of the court
case) but what should they have done differently? What would have been
the correct course of action for an American plant collector in Peru to
take after discovering a new species of Phrag? What should Selby have
done when this unimaginably serendipitous piece of plant material
dropped in their lap?

K Barrett" wrote in message
news:uvadnWF0AbVZXefenZ2dnUVZ_sWdnZ2d@comcast. com...


jamiemtl wrote:


ok - so im now fascinated with Silva's and Norris' case. Apparently
they would get fake permits for legal orchids, then ship illegal ones
with these legit permits? It said on the US department of
agriculture's
website that they even devised a code to determine what these orchids
were? Does anyone have any further information?


That's why I said this could become a life's work. Its a great story.

To answer your question about how this is done.

If you were to go to any orchid show you'd see orchids for sale, and
mostly they are out of bloom. Yous see just a mass of green plant
stuffs.

One out of bloom orchid plant - for the most part - looks like any
other orchid plant of the same variety. The way we tell them apart is
by the tag the vendor puts on the plant. For ease in labelling,
vendors will label their plants by number and have a master list as to
what all the numbers mean. Then when they get to where ever they are
going they'll put a better tag on the plant. So you'll see plants
tagged '1167 Soph cernua' and some just '1167' and you as teh purchaser
have to know/ask what '1167' is. Pretty much this is standard
operating procedure, but to a customs agent or a reporter looking for a
story it could look like a "code".

Nevertheless, the key to the crime is that one orchid looks pretty much
like another of the same variety when its out of bloom.

So, your cohort (in the country of origin) writes up a bunch of
paperwork saying you two are importing an easy to get plant like
Phragmipedium schlimii (an example only). He gets CITES & USFWS
(endangered species) permits to import Phrag schlimii. The paperwork
says item #123 is Phrag schlimii. But really item #123 is rare, sexy
Phrag kovachii (an example only), a plant people would kill for. The
customs agents look over his shipment, sees that a bunch of Phrags are
coming in, but they really have no idea WHAT they are because one out
of bloom phrag looks pretty much like another. You pick up the plants
at the customs house. Your cohort has emailed you the real list,
stating #123 is kovachii. Bada bing! You're in the money. You
contact your friends who you know will want the plants no matter what
the cost, and you laugh all the way to the bank. Unless you are George
Norris, who - according the the feds - never deleted his email or
cleaned his hard drive and they found the trail. Then you wind up in
prison. Note: George wasn't busted for Phrag. kovachii, Selby Gardens
and Michael Kovach were, I just used those species as an example.

I could go on, but its your homework, LOL!!

If you can figure out the OGD's search feature you should be able to
find Norris's own post about how the feds treated him when they served
their search warrant. I thought it was chilling.

You may also be able to find an account of how Eurpoean vendors filled
the back of a pick up truck with illegally collected Phrag kovachiis to
sell in Europe. I guess their customs agents are even worse than ours
at plant identification _ I'm kidding the story is more convoluted than
that, but there's only so much I can write at one time.

K Barrett

Al wrote:
There was a short sidebar-like blurb in the AOS magazine "Orchids" several
months written by a CITES employee that said the Peruvian government had
issued export permits for flasks of kovachii to an American destination
...so it is already here in the US legally although where I'm sure I can't
say...

"K Barrett" wrote in message

Jerry Fischer (Orchids Limited) has them (with papers), among others. I
thought about it...

Rob


--
Rob's Rules: http://littlefrogfarm.com
1) There is always room for one more orchid
2) There is always room for two more orchids
2a) See rule 1
3) When one has insufficient credit to obtain more
orchids, obtain more credit

Abandon all hope oh ye who enter here...

Cracking up in FL.........I knew the OP would get caught up in this, LOL!
"Join us..............Join us........."

Diana

On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 12:37:59 -0500, Rob
wrote:

Al wrote:
There was a short sidebar-like blurb in the AOS magazine "Orchids" several
months written by a CITES employee that said the Peruvian government had
issued export permits for flasks of kovachii to an American destination
...so it is already here in the US legally although where I'm sure I can't
say...

"K Barrett" wrote in message

Jerry Fischer (Orchids Limited) has them (with papers), among others. I
thought about it...

Rob

I think Chuck Acker's has them too. I know there are some
restrictions on how soon they can be sold, compot or individual
pot. At least the agreement with the Peruvian gov. had a holding
period requirement.
SuE
http://orchids.legolas.org/gallery/albums.php

"wow, this is amazing. i love it! i'm reading Orchid Fever right
now..and who knows, maybe by tomorrow I'll go out and by myself a few
orchids!!!"



aiieee no no run away run away!!!!! ;-)


(fascinating thread BTW)

--j_a

Just wondering what is CITES, if it cost so freeking much, why doesn't
customs fund a genome project for orchids, or for that matter provide
funding to AOS for a project, then they could do a relativly cheep test
and find out, I mean the Fish and Game lab in Oregon has been doing the
same thing for 20 years

Jack

but don't mind me, I still have problems keeping my orchids alive

wrote:
Hey All!

Workinng on a Case Study of Illegal Orchid Smugglings for a school
project. Anyone have any first hand experiences with this? I would be
interested to hear anyones experiences in dealing with underground
Orchids. Confidentiality is assured. Would be up for either email
correspondence and/or a quick telephone chat.

I'm in Canada - but you could be wherever!
Drop me a line at fergusonwoods AT hotmail DOT com if you're
interested!

Thanks!

You might familiarize yourself with the cites link at
http://www.orchidweb.org/aos/conservation/page05.aspx
and www.cites.org Then research to see what is being imported into
your country that is on the list.

.. . . Pam
Everything Orchid Management System
http://home.earthlink.net/~profpam/page3.html
----------------------------------------------------

Jack,

CITES is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. As
discussed elsewhere in this thread, the original idea was to protect
wildlife which was being killed off by poachers, etc. When they added
plants, the didn't refine the language, and the result has been that orchids
are regularly destroyed rather than being collected when endangered by
activity in a given area. Add to that all the shipped orchids that have been
left to roast on tarmacs, and you can understand the frustration that some
of us feel.

but don't mind me, I still have problems keeping my orchids alive

Join the great big club!

Diana

I will be surprised enough to faint if the US gov't provides any such
funding. But if they actually did, the AOS would not be the folks to manage
it. I don't get down there often, only when I have something I think might
be worthy of submitting to the judges when they meet once a month (the two
rarely coincide). But in the last few trips, I've seen Dendrobiums planted
in the ground, in full sun, outside the building (dying, of course), a gift
shop full of cool-growing Miltoniopsis, which don't have a prayer in the
hands of a south Florida hobbyist, labelled only "Miltonia Hybrid," and
numerous other grossly inappropriate practices. So I certainly wouldn't
want to see the AOS in charge of any such program.

The sad facts are that, even assuming the treaty could be modified to permit
it, it's going to cost $$$ to rescue the plants currently being destroyed,
and use some of them to produce and grow artificially-propagated plants to
ease the demand on wild collection. It's also going to require qualified
personnel. Neither donations nor tax $$ allocations have been able to meet
those conditions for a long time now, but it seems that no one is willing to
let the process pay for itself by granting permits to anyone who might be
able to do it at even a small profit. So, they continue to be destroyed.
Kenni

"Jack" wrote in message
oups.com...
Just wondering what is CITES, if it cost so freeking much, why doesn't
customs fund a genome project for orchids, or for that matter provide
funding to AOS for a project, then they could do a relativly cheep test
and find out, I mean the Fish and Game lab in Oregon has been doing the
same thing for 20 years

Jack

but don't mind me, I still have problems keeping my orchids alive