CITES and Nepenthes

Matthew Jebb (mjebb@otto.tcd.ie)
Thu, 9 Mar 95 16:11:36 GMT

>
>> On the other hand (especially Michael C.) you know yourself that present
>> practice in legislation (remember CITES!) and permits is too far from the
>> ideal to work satisfactorily even for purely scientific research.
>Ok. Lets shed some light on this process. So how does it work if I want
>to collect some few plants from central Celebes and I want to take them
>back home into my hood to make generally accessible to the public (for
>a small fee to cover some of my expenses). Does it help if I have
>scientific background ?

In fact quite the opposite. From Indonesia, 7 taxa of Nepenthes have been
collected and named in the last 20 odd years, but at Bogor, the National
herbarium of Indoneisa, not a SINGLE type specimen of these species has EVER
been deposited. Is it any surprise that Indonesian botanists are thoroughly
pissed off >-( with people collecting without permits. Several European
botanists (one's WITH scientific backgrounds) are now in very poor favour
with Indonesia, and are unlikely to be ever allowed to collect "officially".
Indonesian taxonomists are the ones who suffer most from this lack of
material, and if Indonesia botanists are to take charge of their botanical
heritage they NEED this material. Today there are many attempts to make
Forest "pay its way" by encouraging commercial exploitation, by local
indigenous peoples, of Rain Forest nuts etc. for food, cosmetics etc.
however the process is nullified if all the orchids, nepenthes and other
horticultural "valuables" have already been ransacked.
_________________________________________________________

Matthew Jebb,
School of Botany,
Trinity College Dublin, E-mail:mjebb@mail.tcd.ie
Dublin 2, Tel: +353-1-702 1421
IRELAND. Fax: +353-1-702 1147
_________________________________________________________