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illegal orchids or orchid smuggling.....
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?? |
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