Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 17:32:47 From: SCHLAUER@chemie.uni-wuerzburg.de To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg1313$foo@default> Subject: re: wild collecting
Dear Paul,
> Education has little effect on large scale poaching for commercial
> purposes. Nor does it seem to stop the botanic gardens (I'm not
> criticising not all of them) some of which still send their people to
> remove large volumes of plants from countries they do not reside in
In my statement I did not mean criminals who are removing large
amounts of plants (I see now that I should have specified this).
These persons can probably not be stopped by education. What I meant
was the amateur or professional enthusiast. If we provide sufficient
information on distribution and rarity of all plants of interest (in
our case cps), they will know which species should not be collected,
and if they collect them, they would know they should at least be
careful not to remove too much. This moral brake would certainly be
sufficient to prevent overcollection by enthusiasts. Criminals are
a different clientele, but obviously even existing law has done little
to prevent crime. It has, however, been very effective in lumping
criminals and enthusiasts together because in the field they cannot
be distinguished easily by their behaviour (but they could, e.g. be
distinguished by the respective quantities of material removed).
A cp society cannot do much more than to condemn crime.
> I can't prove it (before anyone asks!) but i
> have a feeling that commercial theft accounts for more damage than any
> other single cause. This certainly seems to be what the experts say.
It depends on the experts you ask. Here in Germany it is evidently
intensive agriculture and industrial pollution that account for
most of the extensive habitat destruction and consequently for the
loss of biodiversity. Only a handful of native species can be
considered threatened by collection by enthusiasts (or even by
commercial growers) here, while several dozens (most of which used to
be agricultural "weeds" or inhabitants of "useless" land) have been
literally wiped out by "optimized" agriculture, reclamation of
wetlands, and inconsiderate pollution. Also, the enthusiast will
usually not destroy the habitat by removal of a few plants, and even
hundreds or thousands of digging enthusiasts/thieves could never be as
effective as a single farmer spraying fertilizers and herbicides or
even a whole factory or the masses of cars releasing pollutants every
day (I do not mean the disputed effects on global climate here but the
direct action of pollutants on the plants in situ). In many other
countries the situation is embarrassingly similar.
I believe the "evil enthusiast" is a modern legend invented and
spread by those politicians who should rather take action against the
real causes but who are afraid of the mighty pressure groups behind
them.
Kind regards
Jan
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