>This term is very
>often used by certain CITES people to make propaganda for CITES. I
>have already said before, that very few plants in the wild are really
>rare (unless their habitat is destroyed). Some are rarely found, but that
>is another story.
I have never heard anyone, despite this statement, use the term "rare" as
"propaganda for CITES". There is, of course, disagreement as to what the
term means. Today the tendency is to use terms like "threatened" or
"endangered" to refer to likelihood of extinction in the near future - which
may have nothing to do with overall population size, local abundance etc.
Things like rate of decline, immediacy of threat etc may be far more
important, and the only way to judge such a characterization is to look at
the data cited in support to determine what was actually meant. For
example, a plant may "cover a whole hillside" and still be extremely rare in
terms of global abundance or highly threatened by habitat destruction ,
invasive exotics, disease, poachers etc.
There are certainly numbers of plants that are rare in the wild by any sense
of the term (a large number of Hawaiian endemics, for example). Not only
that, in some cases at least the rarity is precisely because of
overcollecting; some species of cactus spring to mind, as well as the cycads
Encephalartos middleburgensis, E. dolomiticus (reduced by poaching to less
than twenty individuals in the wild) and other species - see the excellent
chapter on cycad conservation in Jones, Cycads of the World, Smithsonian
Institution Press 1993. Jones agrees that listing may srve to highlight a
species as being worthy of poachers' attentions, and this must be guarded
against (among other things, by proper enforcement of the listing once
made), but he is positive about CITES overall.
>> I imagine if a poacher went in and collected samples of an endangered CP
>> it would probably do a heck of a lot less damage than the acres of that
>> species that would probably be wiped out that same year by farming,
>> mining, housing developments, etc.
Unless that species as in a protected area already - and that certainly does
happen for Nepenthes and other species.
>> Exactly how do CITES people declare habitats extinct? I have never
>> heard of such a thing in over ten years of dealings with CITES.
>
>
>In that case, I am afraid you are not reading too much of the
>literature and not listening too much to talks by CITES propagators.
I read plenty of it. I repeat, I have never heard anyone at CITES say that
a HABITAT (as opposed to a species) was extinct, and I would be glad to see
a reference to a specific quote.
-- Ronald I. Orenstein Phone: (905) 820-7886 (home) International Wildlife Coalition Fax/Modem: (905) 569-0116 (home) Home: 1825 Shady Creek Court Messages: (416) 368-4661 Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5L 3W2 Internet: ornstn@inforamp.net Office: 130 Adelaide Street W., Suite 1940 Toronto, Ontario Canada M5H 3P5