Re: Plant smuggling
Carl Strohmenger (cstrohme@com1.med.usf.edu)
Wed, 12 Apr 1995 08:27:33 -0400 (EDT)
IMMHO (In my most humble opinion) and FWIW (for what it's worth)
This is outrageous. It gives all of us a bad name when the officials
representing our organizations are involved in this sort of thing. And I
am not singling out CP societies. The same thing happens in orchid
societies, fern societies, etc. whenever an officer (or even an
identifiable member) is involved in some illegal harvesting activity. I
am involved in an organization that adopted a formal 'Harvesting From The
Wild' policy statement and publishes it regularly in that society's
newsletter. We have to become much better at educating our members in the
proper ways to get plants. And we could relieve the pressure on illegal
activities like this if we promote the legal propagation of the various
plant species. Perhaps some sort of a formal program to encourage the
sharing and spread of propagation techniques and secrets is called for.
- Carl
On Tue, 11 Apr 1995, Brian Jones wrote:
> As reported in the _Los Angeles Times_ today, April 11, 1995 (Metro),
> an Alameda county prosecutor plead guilty here to charges that he
> smuggled more than 200 endangered tropical pitcher plants from
> Indonesia and Malaysia into the United States.
> He admitted that he and two other members of the Bay Area Carnivorous
> Plant Society travelled to these nations and mailed or brought the plants
> back to the U.S., without permits.
>