Recently David [Hunt] wrote on this list
"Philippines stall had all their plants confiscated and force to donate all their orchids to the botanical garden, due to the French authority believe their CITES documents were fake"
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg03940.html
thanks to Martin Epstein for providing a link to the New York Times news story about a similar occurrence in Miami :
"the ... illegals were immediately quarantined when they arrived from the Philippines at Miami International Airport last month...
orchids - more than 1,100 of them and they had literally been ripped from the wild.
...
the threatened orchids are receiving intensive care in the Bronx...
a ceaseless war between importers and federal enforcement agencies...
many endangered specimens have been saved by the efforts of government agencies, nonprofit institutions, scientists and volunteers.
Teams of plant experts ... are regularly called upon to rescue plants and nurse them back to health, ultimately attempting to preserve their gene lines. "These unfortunate imports are like people trying to cross the border illegally," said Dr. Kim E. Tripp, director of the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, where the 1,100 seized orchids were sent. "We drop everything and try to save them."
The huge shipment of orchids from the Philippines ... arrived in Miami on March 10...
they were inspected by the United States Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service at the Miami airport....
an alert botanist realized that the plants' entry permit had been falsified...
While the shipment's paperwork said that the orchids were artificially cultivated, "clearly these were wild orchids,"...
So the orchids were seized under the provisions of a 1975 international treaty intended to curb the trafficking of endangered animals and plants that have come from the wild.
...
Since 1990, the [New York] Botanical Garden has been federally designated as one of 73 plan-rescue centers in the country.
...
"... conservation takes precedence for us," said Todd Forrest, an associate vice president who is in charge of the horticultural division."
...
Some of the plants in the Miami shipment that have been identified are worth $500 or more, and the entire collection could be worth in the tens of thousands of dollars.
A few of the plants, called Vanda ustii, have only recently been described by scientists. Among the other discoveries so far is a small specimen of Grammatophyllum speciosum...
In the past, 80 to 90 percent have survived," Mr. Hachadourian said of previous rescues."
...
Of the destiny of the orchids, which are on permanent loan from the government, Dr. Tripp, said: "We are their stewards. We hold them as a treasure in perpetuity, for everyone."
source :
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/nyregion/06orchid.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1112799632-f+kyh0rMmAziYkAn2Xg5Ew
********* Regards,
Viateur
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