"When Mac Rivenbark was busted at Miami International Airport in 2005 with 1,403 contraband orchids, he told arresting officers, ``I am probably the first flower smuggler you have ever taken to jail.''
Rivenbark pleaded guilty... in U.S. District Court... Wagner Vendrame of the University of Florida's Tropical Research and Education Center near Homestead recalls that in 2002... Michael Kovach smuggled three rare orchids from Peru and brought them to the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, where it was officially verified that he had discovered a new species. ... The feds fined Kovach and placed him on probation, but Vendrame noted that Phragmipedium kovachii was named for the orchid smuggler... Vendrame counted a dozen different orchid societies just in South Florida... Vendrame said that in 2002... the University of Florida drafted him to teach a class on orchids... In 1975, the United States, in conjunction with an international treaty, passed a law barring unauthorized importation of endangered species, including orchids. Mac Rivenbark, former president of the Fort Lauderdale Orchid Society and a well-known lecturer on orchid cultivation, also runs a small commercial enterprise, Mac's Orchids, out of his home... Rivenbark, whose cache of illegal orchids came from the jungles of the Philippines, probably faces a hefty fine and probation" URL : http://www.miamiherald.com/431/story/641305.html *************** Regards, VB _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
