Re: [OGD] Illegal imports
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? Regards/Roger, in Bangkok On 9/24/07, Aaron J. Hicks [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: frank thrall [EMAIL PROTECTED] spaketh thusly: Barbara. Look at it this way. None of us would knowingly purchase illegally imported plants. A bit of an odd statement. When someone buys a box of paphs from Asia and has them sent to their doorstep in the United States- only to be intercepted by ICE- and ends up getting one heck of a stiff fine out of the deal, I would opine they knew precisely what they're doing. When every single species in that box is of the sort one cannot purchase legally in the United States- not just because they're Appendix I but because they are not available on the market- I would say it's a certainty. And does it happen? Oh, yes it does- and the physician who bought them was fined $10,000. -AJHicks Chandler, AZ ___ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) orchids@orchidguide.com http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
[OGD] Illegal imports
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) orchids@orchidguide.com http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
[OGD] Illegal imports
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? Regards/Roger, in Bangkok Roger no one knows the exact figure, but I imagine the ratio is much higher than one. Let's just consider one of many factors that go into the equation. In the case of Phragmipedium kovachii there are at this moment FIFTEEN legal mature plants plus their divisions in two Peruvian nurseries, actively propagating all the legal seedlings in the world. With an estimated THREE THOUSAND illegal Phragmipedium kovachii plants smuggled out of Peru to countries all over the world, plants for which huge sums of money were paid, many of which, no doubt, reached propagators and reached them one year before the two Peruvian nurseries got their legal plants, I venture to guess that the illegal seedlings easily outnumber the legal ones by a factor of twenty to one hundred. How this translates into a ratio you are looking for, I leave up to you. peter ___ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) orchids@orchidguide.com http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
[OGD] Illegal imports
Roger, in Bangkok [EMAIL PROTECTED] asked a question well outside my pay grade when he inquired thusly: 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? Well, now. If you include the commercial shipments worth $billions, it's probably close to negligible. But it's certainly not zero. Otherwise, why would there be 65 Plant Rescue Centers in the US and its territories? http://www.fws.gov/international/pdf/prc.pdf They only cite statistics from 2002, but note that 281 plant shipments were intercepted, including 10,127 plants- of which 7,702 were orchids. Of those 281 shipments, 280 went to plant rescue centers; one shipment (consisting of one plant) was returned to the country of export. One supposes this number has gone up on the basis of better funding and (hopefully) training on the part of interdiction personnel. It worked in the War on Drugs, after all; the Controlled Substances Act was passed in 1970, and we've hardly had a problem since then. Nixon declared War on Cancer in 1971, so I expect we'll have a cure for that soon, too. Whether the individuals purchasing these plants were intentionally breaking the law when they did so is unknown. When someone clicks on a dig-em-up in a brown box from Asia, it's tough to know whether either party has a full understanding of the Byzantine laws, regulations, and perpetually unwritten rules of order to which we mere mortals are left to interpret unaided. To borrow some of the context above and to steal from P.J. O'Rourke, it's tough to tell what impact the War on Drugs is having on crime because it's tough to get a urine sample from a crack addict while he's sticking up a 7-11. Warning: if some of the sarcasm included here went over your head, do not attempt to reach for it without proper supplementation with oxygen. No semblance between crack addicts and online purchases of dig-em-up paphs is implied, but it should be. Cheers, -AJHicks Chandler, AZ ___ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) orchids@orchidguide.com http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
[OGD] Illegal imports
frank thrall [EMAIL PROTECTED] spaketh thusly: Barbara. Look at it this way. None of us would knowingly purchase illegally imported plants. A bit of an odd statement. When someone buys a box of paphs from Asia and has them sent to their doorstep in the United States- only to be intercepted by ICE- and ends up getting one heck of a stiff fine out of the deal, I would opine they knew precisely what they're doing. When every single species in that box is of the sort one cannot purchase legally in the United States- not just because they're Appendix I but because they are not available on the market- I would say it's a certainty. And does it happen? Oh, yes it does- and the physician who bought them was fined $10,000. -AJHicks Chandler, AZ ___ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) orchids@orchidguide.com http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
