"Roger, in Bangkok" asked: "Out of all the shipments globally in a year, just how high do you suppose the incidents of intentional vs, unintentional law breaking do you suppose there might be?"
That is impossible to quantify. But in certain cases, it is extremely easy. Anybody outside Vietnam who has purchased a Vietnamese-origin orchid in the last 15-20 years has broken the law. Same applies to orchids originating in Papua New Guinea and purchased outside PNG in the last 16 years, unless the orchids are in flask. Ditto for Myanmar. Ditto for Laos. Not certain about China, but I could try to find out how many CITES permits for orchids they have issued; I doubt it is very many. Anyone who owns a plant that originated in one of those countries has purchased an illegally imported plant. We are talking here about a significant proportion of OGD subscribers. How often have we seen requests for help identifying (or cultivating, etc) an obscure Viet-origin (Lao-origin, PNG-origin, etc) plant that was recently purchased from xxx nursery ? Yes, those are the very plants I'm talking about. I've said it before ... they're illegal. "Aha", you say .... "O'Byrne is twisting things again .... the question was about intentional law breaking, while I unintentionally broke the law when I purchased my little darling". Where I come from (and in every country I've resided in), ignorance of the law is not an acceptable defence. You are expected to know if your little darling is legit or not. So to Frank Thrall, who said "None of us would knowingly purchase illegally imported plants" I would respond "sorry, but your statement is neither credible nor relevant". Peter O'Byrne _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
