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Originally Posted by The_Dunedan
Can we all pause for a second and realize that the idea that the Feds can control what plants one can or cannot own or sell is insane!? Since when is it some paper-pushing bullies buisiness what someone grows on his own property or brings into the country on his own dime?
PERMITS!? I'm sorry, I thought this was America...you know, where Private Property is supposed to be respected.
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I'm not going to spend more time looking for more authoritive sources than the one in the quote box below. The point is that there are persuasive reasons for the laws that control imports of rare plants.Mr. Norris apparently instructed a foreign national as to how to circumvent effective U.S. customs inspection, broke the law for 5 to 8 years for profit, was "turned in" by a law abiding party who recognized the rather obscure, international law that Norris was breaking, and Norris misled investigators when they tried to determine if he was involved in criminal activity. Then Norris spread his apparently false story of being unfairly harrassed, intimidated, and persecuted by FWS agents.
Norris's argument, in dksuddeth's article, was that he had not even been arrested. A few months later, he was indicted, arrested, and then he pled guilty.
There are laws prohibiting the cultivation of varities of hemp, coca, and opium poppy plants, and I'm sure, other species, even in the privacy of one's own home.
How else can there be international control in protecting fragile, exoctic eco-systems, given the following description:
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http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/aug09/os1.asp
Deccan Herald, Saturday, August 9, 2003
Northeast Mississippi Community College in Booneville, Mississippi, is one of the first public buildings to use plants to make itself a healthy indoor environment!
.......The Orchid Hunters: As early as the seventeenth century the orchid hunters had begun their often lethal hunt to find and grab as many kinds of orchids as they could from the tropics, even from India, to sell them in Europe. During the 1850’s collectors began to rush to the tropics of Asia and the Americas, seeking orchids. Some of them were brutal and shameless and took every sample of precious plants, and even destroyed all others, to preserve their rarity! A single specimen of an orchid could fetch a collector thousands of dollars! Thankfully, the golden age of orchid hunting ended with the beginning of World War I.
Making up one in seven of all the world’s flowering plant species, orchids are truly fascinating. Some orchid blooms have a lovely scent while some stink! An orchid can resemble a shoe shaped pouch or a slipper or even an apron!
<b>The tragedy is that even today orchids are threatened by over-collection and by deforestation. Forests are cut down and orchids vanish. Whole forests were torn to get to the orchids perched in trees! Why? Because it was easier to cut down a tree to get the orchid instead of climbing the tree trunk to tear the plant off!</b> A small, dark purple lady’s slipper orchid which grew in Hong Kong was smuggled into the United States! One lovely orchid was so plentiful at one time that it was used as an aquarium plant because tropical fish fanciers had found that it continued to live inside fish tanks! Now it has died out!
<b>All trade in wild collected orchids is now prohibited except under licence. But ships filled with orchids are still coming into the United States and the UK. Orchids are still being collected in the wild and forests are still being cut down!</b>
The Royal Botanic Garden at Kew in England has taken the lead in conservation of endangered plants all over the world and the orchids in this picture are from Kew’s orchid bank. Hopefully more gardens will follow Kew’s example!
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