This CITES stuff

Chris Marsden (100620.2156@compuserve.com)
06 Apr 96 06:08:57 EST

Hi All,
As you saw from my Subject line, I'm not a great fan of CITES.
In fact,
I'd wash my hands of it if I didn't have to be interested in it for the
sake of my CP collection. Surely, Guido, what you are saying is that
CITES is not supposed to help conservation, or maybe I'm reading between
the lines. I would have thought, being an uneducated an unsophisticated
layman, that CITES (which is, after all, the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species) is supposed to help conservation by
preventing people from going out and harvesting CITES and CITES
appendices listed plants. Unfortunately, to my mind, CITES has more
then slightly backfired. If it really does want to help conservation,
it doesn't do it by preventing people from spreading the plant's
distribution under cultivation. If it does this (and this of course is
what it _is_ doing) then it will succeed in keeping the plant in only
one location, where it may well die and, hey presto! Another Extinct
plant. In fact, if it wants to help the plant, it should encourage the
distribution of it, by making it easier to get the necessary
certificates, and lowering their price so that the average enthusiast
can afford to trade plants with fellow growers the other side of the
pond, and indeed anywhere else in the world.

Just my..er.. tuppence worth.

Toby