Last word on confiscated VFT's

Marj Boyer (Marj_Boyer@mail.agr.state.nc.us)
Thu, 31 Oct 96 12:40:19 EST

Thanks again to Sean Barry 10/30 for pointing out many of the
complications involved in dealing with poached plants. Another,
major, problem in replanting confiscated plants is that it takes lots
of manpower (i.e. even more of your taxpayer's money, on top of what
was spent on enforcement in the first place) to put the plants back
where they may be poached right away again. Maybe even poached by the
people who do the replanting, if it's perpetrators making restitution
or overinterested volunteers. So confiscated plants get disposed of
in a variety of ways - some get put back, some go to public
institutions (and yes, we have swamped botanical gardens/zoos with
'em), some get thrown away, some get held for evidence until they're
defunct... no ideal system.

Why even bother about poaching/smuggling when the major threat to
these plants is loss of habitat? In the case of VFT's, habitat IS
being protected, by public agencies and the Nature Conservancy (your
tax dollars & voluntary contributions at work, in addition to funds
put up by hunters to maintain game lands); the habitat is being
managed to maintain the natural community (your tax dollars etc.);
there are no significant natural threats to the plants in terms of
predators or diseases or blocks to reproduction; the species is not
hard to cultivate & there's a plentiful supply of propagated plants,
so there's no reason to collect quantities from the wild. With all
these conservation factors in place, populations are being wiped out
on protected lands. Poachers/smugglers (AND those who provide a
market for them) are THE problem. And it's very hard to stop
poachers, without twenty times the manpower presently available (your
tax dollars...), or to get hard evidence to prosecute those who get
caught (for one, the plants don't come with serial numbers on them).
So the most efficient use of your tax dollars etc., with preservation
of the wild species as the goal, is what may look like overzealous
prosecution of those cases that can be taken to court, and publicity
about the prosecution, so that potential poachers will be discouraged
from doing it in the first place.

I will now dismount this high horse and put it out to pasture (or let
someone else ride it). Thanks for the numerous responses folks have
sent on the issue.

Marj Boyer from North Carolina