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Oh, wonderful CITES!
Slipper orchids face danger of extinction in Viet Nam
01/11/2006 -- 17:27(GMT+7) http://www.vnagency.com.vn/NewsA.asp...ID=31&NEWS_ID= 182289 Ha Noi, Jan. 11 (VNA) - Vietnamese slipper orchids are facing the danger of extinction due to over-exploitation and have been listed as endangered species, said ecologist Phan Ke Loc from the Viet Nam Science and Technology Institute. Viet Nam has 20 species of slipper orchids, many of which are diminishing. Recently, scientists have identified three globally threatened species of slipper orchids, scientifically named Paphiopedilum spp. in the Phong Nha- Ke Bang National Park in central Quang Binh province. The Paphiopedilum species, which has been listed in the World Conservation Union?s Red List of threatened species, are found in primitive forests at an altitude of 1,000 m above sea level. The slipper orchids were first found in central coastal Khanh Hoa province in 1922 but they populations were quickly decimated by over-exploitation. They were discovered again in 1996 in Khanh Hoa province and northern mountainous Cao Bang province. Since then, they have been exploited to near extinction. -- Reka This is LIFE! It's not a rehearsal. Don't miss it! http://www.rolbox.it/hukari/index.html |
Oh, wonderful CITES!
But heaven help someone who tries to harvest a few to save the species! Just
let the poachers take them; that's the natural order of things, after all. (Insert sarcasm emoticon here.) Diana |
Oh, wonderful CITES!
So they wouldn't be threatened in their native habitat if more collecting
were allowed? It's acceptable to strip all of the plants out of their habitat as long as they are freely available to the horticultural trade? I don't see any problem with giving countries the right to control their natural resources (although the application of CITES to preserved flowers and herbarium specimens is going a little far.) CITES regulates the shipment of orchids, it's not a ban. If the originating country allows the species to be sold then they can be shipped with the appropriate documents. If the country doesn't allow them to be sold, there are about 20,000 other species and 100,000+ hybrids you can grow instead. -danny |
Oh, wonderful CITES!
So they wouldn't be threatened in their native habitat if more collecting
were allowed? It's acceptable to strip all of the plants out of their habitat as long as they are freely available to the horticultural trade? I guess I'd better elaborate. No, I do not find that acceptable. What irks me is that enforcement of conservation often appears to be aimed more at researchers and those who would reproduce the plants, whether for sale or to replenish their numbers in their natural habitat than at poachers. I don't mean to suggest that poachers are never caught (they are). Researchers are far more likely to go through the proper channels than your average poacher, right? And then they jump through all the hoops and sometimes are denied anyway, while the poachers go merrily on their way. I'm trying to be fairly specific here so I don't get flamed again; my asbestos suit is at the cleaners. If the country doesn't allow them to be sold, there are about 20,000 other species and 100,000+ hybrids you can grow instead. No need to be snarky. I think better of you than that. Diana |
Oh, wonderful CITES!
Are signatory countries able to grant export permits to selected other
countries or is it an ALL or none kind of deal. So if Country "A" has a plant within it's border and declares it to be on the Appendix I list can it grant export permits to Country 'B" but not to country "C" I *think* the answer is no. If you can find the plant for sale in Country 'B" but country 'A" does not allow export, then you can not get legal permission to bring into Country 'C" from Country "B" or to buy it legally inside country 'B" or Country C...no matter how it got there. Of course, I could be wrong. If country A does not allow it's export, it doesn't matter how the plant is collected or propagated inside country A, you can't have it if you don't live there. If you want to buy a plant from outside your country, make sure you understand permit requirements; don't count on the vendor to know. If you find a plant inside your country that you question, check with your government's CITES office to be sure. Your government's Cites office can help with both issues. On the other hand, if you want to express an opinion, you've come to the right place. IMHO, a thread with a name like this one was meant to burn. Enjoy it, but be wary...and bring your thick skin. |
Oh, wonderful CITES!
Diana Kulaga wrote:
So they wouldn't be threatened in their native habitat if more collecting were allowed? It's acceptable to strip all of the plants out of their habitat as long as they are freely available to the horticultural trade? I guess I'd better elaborate. No, I do not find that acceptable. What irks me is that enforcement of conservation often appears to be aimed more at researchers and those who would reproduce the plants, whether for sale or to replenish their numbers in their natural habitat than at poachers. I don't mean to suggest that poachers are never caught (they are). But that does not argue for doing away with CITES as so many orchid growers like to claim. It indicates that enforcement needs to be more strict. If the Phrag kovachii saga tells us anything, it is that free trade in flasked seedlings is insufficient to prevent over-exploitation of wild populations. Peruvians started flasking P. kovachii soon after it was discovered, but the known localities were stripped long before those flasked plants could possibly have matured. Flasking has been possible since the 1920s, but cheap collected paphs were on sale in the AOS bulletin as late as the early 1980s. It was CITES, not flasking, that limited sales of collected Paphs. If the country doesn't allow them to be sold, there are about 20,000 other species and 100,000+ hybrids you can grow instead. No need to be snarky. I think better of you than that. I'll second Danny's sentiment. No one is gonna die if they can't have a Paph hangianum or a Phrag kovachii, but we orchid growers spend more time lamenting that CITES prevents us from growing the latest greatest species, than we do lamenting the loss of the wild plants. Lets not forget that the poachers are selling the plants to orchid growers. Nick |
Wonderful CITES
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 "danny" wrote in message . .. So they wouldn't be threatened in their native habitat if more collecting were allowed? It's acceptable to strip all of the plants out of their habitat as long as they are freely available to the horticultural trade? I don't see any problem with giving countries the right to control their natural resources (although the application of CITES to preserved flowers and herbarium specimens is going a little far.) CITES regulates the shipment of orchids, it's not a ban. If the originating country allows the species to be sold then they can be shipped with the appropriate documents. If the country doesn't allow them to be sold, there are about 20,000 other species and 100,000+ hybrids you can grow instead. -danny |
Wonderful CITES
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 |
Wonderful CITES
Just to irritate things more, wouldn't it be better to at least attempt
something like forbidding publication of new species discovery until years after the fact? That would give time for propagation, albeit making someone pretty rich selling the first flask babies. But it might protect the wild species. -- Reka This is LIFE! It's not a rehearsal. Don't miss it! http://www.rolbox.it/hukari/index.html |
Wonderful CITES
Good luck with that!
You thing the naming of Phrag. kovachii caused a ruckus in the immediate timeframe, think of what would happen if you had to wait years. Memories and even records can get mighty "cloudy" over time. -- Ray Barkalow - First Rays Orchids - www.firstrays.com Plants, Supplies, Artwork, Books and Lots of Free Info! "Reka" wrote in message .. . Just to irritate things more, wouldn't it be better to at least attempt something like forbidding publication of new species discovery until years after the fact? That would give time for propagation, albeit making someone pretty rich selling the first flask babies. But it might protect the wild species. -- Reka This is LIFE! It's not a rehearsal. Don't miss it! http://www.rolbox.it/hukari/index.html |
Wonderful CITES
Taxonomy is of course a science. It scrapes the bottom of the science
barrel but it technically still classes as a science :-). In the world of publish or perish, you've got buckley's chance of getting any scientist to wait longer than necessary to publish new names. With competition for grants and the possibility of someone else publishing first, I don't know if you can blame them for shouting out loud when they find or make up ;-) a new species. Andrew |
Wonderful CITES
Ray wrote: "Reka" wrote in message .. . Just to irritate things more, wouldn't it be better to at least attempt something like forbidding publication of new species discovery until years after the fact? That would give time for propagation, albeit making someone pretty rich selling the first flask babies. But it might protect the wild species. Good luck with that! You thing the naming of Phrag. kovachii caused a ruckus in the immediate timeframe, think of what would happen if you had to wait years. Memories and even records can get mighty "cloudy" over time. And it would only work in cases where a species was first discovered by researchers. In a situation like P. kovachii, it would have no effect, because people would want the plant regardless of whether it was named. It would also put the burden of solving the problem on people who did not cause it in the first place. So, assuming that a) in the case of the Vietnamese Paphs and South American Phrags, the main threat is the horticultural trade (the things grow on mountainsides and were surviving quite happily until the orchid trade discovered them), b) our primary goal is preserving the wild plants, and the ability to cultivate them is secondary, c) we want to prevent the problem of previously smuggled plants being "laundered" when artificially propagated seedlings become available, how about this solution: Ban in perpetuity the sale of those species affected. Have the AOS, RHS, and other regional societies ban from shows and judging the species and any hybrids derived from those species. Make this ban permanent. Blacklist any nurseries selling the plants. Fine and confiscate the collections of anyone caught with those particular species. This would immediately reduce the monetary value of the plants. People with smuggled plants could no longer hope to show or sell their plants in the future when seedlings become more common, so there would be less incentive to smuggle in the first place. Sure, some people would still want to grow them secretly, but we all know that orchidists love to show off their plants, and if there was no hope of ever ever doing that, fewer people would be interested. The risk would be greater than the payoff. Since we orchid growers have created the problems for Vietnamese paphs and P. kovachii, this solution would appropriately put the burden of solving it on us as well. Nick |
Wonderful CITES
Sorry, Danny, upon looking back I see you were not the one who made that
suggestion. My problems with CITES, however, are not the motives you ascribe to "many" of the opponents. While you're correct that CITES technically doesn't stop all _legal_orchid trade, it makes it far less profitable. I will also agree that a big portion of this problem is sloppy, inconsistent, and often just plain WRONG enforcement. Meanwhile, I don't think it's doing much, if anything at all, to stop the _illegal_ trade, but is if anything making the latter _more_ profitable for those willing to take the [so far, relatively remote] likelihood of being caught. Just my 2 cents, Kenni .. "danny" wrote in message .. . 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 |
Wonderful CITES
Kenni Judd wrote:
While you're correct that CITES technically doesn't stop all _legal_orchid trade, it makes it far less profitable. I will also agree that a big portion of this problem is sloppy, inconsistent, and often just plain WRONG enforcement. Meanwhile, I don't think it's doing much, if anything at all, to stop the _illegal_ trade, but is if anything making the latter _more_ profitable for those willing to take the [so far, relatively remote] likelihood of being caught. Just my 2 cents, Kenni To some extent, I agree with this, but I think that the answer is not to make legal trade easier. That will have limited effect on smuggling. Rather, to reduce smuggling, we may need to reduce the international trade in orchids and increase enforcement of CITES. If you look at old advertisements, I think you will find that slipper prices increased and flasked seedlings became more common after Paphs and Phrags were placed on Appendix 1 in 1989. Flasking is relatively expensive and labor intensive, so collected plants can often be sold more cheaply than flasklings. Strict regulation of imports was required to make domestic slipper flasking economically viable, even though the technology had been around for decades. Many of the species currently being smuggled are already well established in cultivation (P. delenatii, Chinese parvisepalums, etc), but since the people smuggling and the people flasking are different, the availablility of flasked plants doesn't necessarily inhibit smuggling. Artificially propagated plants can actually aid poaching by making it easier to launder the poached plants. For instance, zillions of venus flytraps are produced by tissue culture, but poaching still occurs. Joe Poacher can't do tissue culture, but he can still make a few bucks poaching. Once the plants are in pots, who can tell the difference between wild and cultured plants? If we were to further reduce international trade in orchids, it would have a limited effect on the average orchid grower. Some newly discovered species and some foreign clones will be harder to obtain, but most species are already available domestically. Those people who make their money importing orchids will suffer, but domestic flasking labs should benefit. For newly discovered species like P. kovachii, ANY international trade can mask smuggling, so the obvious answer is to keep the plants out of cultivation, even though it might be fun to grow one. As long as the plants are not legally in cultivation, smuggled plants will stick out like a sore thumb. On the other hand, relaxing CITES regulations on international trade in artificially propagated plants might paradoxically make poaching more common. Prices of slipper orchids would be reduced, and relatively expensive domestically flasked would have a hard time competing with cheaper imports. The situation would revert to the pre-1989 market, and collected plants (though making less money per plant), would be easier to launder through legal import/export channels. Nick |
Wonderful CITES
Nick,
Interesting points - but the one thing that kept popping up in my head: Do *YOU* want the same "take-no-prisoners war-on-drugs" federal enforcement officers knocking down your doors and trashing your greenhouse because someone "reported" you as having some of these banned plants you are advocating? The number of innocent people KILLED during mistaken drug raids is well documented - are you ready to die for your orchids? Extreme examples, I know, but I put them out to make people stop and think. -Eric in SF www.orchidphotos.org wrote in message oups.com... Kenni Judd wrote: While you're correct that CITES technically doesn't stop all _legal_orchid trade, it makes it far less profitable. I will also agree that a big portion of this problem is sloppy, inconsistent, and often just plain WRONG enforcement. Meanwhile, I don't think it's doing much, if anything at all, to stop the _illegal_ trade, but is if anything making the latter _more_ profitable for those willing to take the [so far, relatively remote] likelihood of being caught. Just my 2 cents, Kenni To some extent, I agree with this, but I think that the answer is not to make legal trade easier. That will have limited effect on smuggling. Rather, to reduce smuggling, we may need to reduce the international trade in orchids and increase enforcement of CITES. If you look at old advertisements, I think you will find that slipper prices increased and flasked seedlings became more common after Paphs and Phrags were placed on Appendix 1 in 1989. Flasking is relatively expensive and labor intensive, so collected plants can often be sold more cheaply than flasklings. Strict regulation of imports was required to make domestic slipper flasking economically viable, even though the technology had been around for decades. Many of the species currently being smuggled are already well established in cultivation (P. delenatii, Chinese parvisepalums, etc), but since the people smuggling and the people flasking are different, the availablility of flasked plants doesn't necessarily inhibit smuggling. Artificially propagated plants can actually aid poaching by making it easier to launder the poached plants. For instance, zillions of venus flytraps are produced by tissue culture, but poaching still occurs. Joe Poacher can't do tissue culture, but he can still make a few bucks poaching. Once the plants are in pots, who can tell the difference between wild and cultured plants? If we were to further reduce international trade in orchids, it would have a limited effect on the average orchid grower. Some newly discovered species and some foreign clones will be harder to obtain, but most species are already available domestically. Those people who make their money importing orchids will suffer, but domestic flasking labs should benefit. For newly discovered species like P. kovachii, ANY international trade can mask smuggling, so the obvious answer is to keep the plants out of cultivation, even though it might be fun to grow one. As long as the plants are not legally in cultivation, smuggled plants will stick out like a sore thumb. On the other hand, relaxing CITES regulations on international trade in artificially propagated plants might paradoxically make poaching more common. Prices of slipper orchids would be reduced, and relatively expensive domestically flasked would have a hard time competing with cheaper imports. The situation would revert to the pre-1989 market, and collected plants (though making less money per plant), would be easier to launder through legal import/export channels. Nick |
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