Re: conservation ethic

Andrew Marshall (andrewm@eskimo.com)
Wed, 6 Mar 1996 18:38:01 -0800 (PST)

Hello Folks,
Tom Hayes has said most of what I wanted to say. Thanks and I
stand with you on that. I will add that any responsible collecter must
have backups not only of thier plants inside the collection but with
friends as well. Also there should be emergency plans "just in case".
My plants are all highly desired as well as bequethed to various places
and people. If something happened to me my plants would be taken care of
before I was even cold. Probably better then I do in some cases but that
is another realm altogether.
As far as relying on state or private organizations to protect
these plants. What makes anyone think they can? I am far more
pessemistic then Tom. I have in the past offered several hundred
seedling S. oreophila "sand mtn." and S. r. jonesii "maclure bog" to the
nature conservancy as well as the wildlife folks of Ga. N.C and S.C. They
were refused flat out and not for any legal reason. They were refused
because to paraphrase what the folks said repeatedly 'we are not
interested in putting plants back'. They are interested in keeping
frozen in time what they have and that is it. I resigned my membership
in TNC and have not been back in 5 years. I was told at the time that
they had no plans for rescue of these plants as were being developed over
etc... and were not likely to develop them. I am hoping that has changed
but I will have to be shown lots of proof before I will believe that the
state or anyone else will do anything except to little and to late. I
will be happy to sit here as long as possible with my collection and some
day when there are no more in the wild be able to at least enjoy those I
have from the various places. The way I see it the govt. won't care and
the rest of the protection folk won't want them. I may be a bit of a
vigilante but I am doing something. I have more of the plants then I
started with and I produced them. Plus there are seedlings around the
world of those strains from seed that I sent to various seedbanks.
Something i will continue to do. With the kind of vigilante conservation
I believe in perhaps we still would have a few auks, dodos parakeets and
pigeons left. I prefer not to wait until the species/site is on the
verge of extinction.
I will step down now I guess. I apologize if this offends anyone but I
get tired of those folks that would rather stand around with buckets in
their hands talking while Rome goes up in flames, to mangle an
expression. As the saying goes, if you want a job done well, do it your
self. Preservation through propagation, distribution and education! Not in
leiu of conserving the wild stocks but as well as.
Not just another collecter.
Good growing
Andrew
ps. The plants mentioned were legitimatly obtained, grown etc and the
seedlins were offered for free with no strings attached.