Seems to me that the government doesn't have a charter for this. What about the Lily group or even PBS developing a program to propagate and distribute such species, and working for a legal way to handle protected species. This could start with rescue of threatened populations. It would require someone to come up with a well-defined program, and an adequate means of distribution. Could this be a more effective way to go about the protection of endangered plants? Jim McKenney wrote: > It occurred to me that it would make good sense to have government > subsidized programs to propagate certain endangered plant species and to > support their establishment as commercial crops.