Thanks for those references, Max. In the Chronicle of Hi Ed article it mentions the Phragmipedium kovachii slipper orchid of Peru. If you ever get a chance to sit down with Harold Koopowitz, you should have him tell you his first hand version of the story about it. Quite amazing what people will do to get these rare new plants, and so sad what happens to them in their native habitat. I'm still puzzled why much greater efforts aren't made to get seeds or offsets or clones into the hands of as many people as want them in an open and as timely a manner as possible. It seems to me that this would go a huge way towards making the poaching of them much less lucrative to the point even of making it not worth the effort. For example, the article mentions the Wollemi Pine of Australia. While this has taken some time to get out to the public, and personally, I think that even the smallest tree seedlings are so overpriced as to counteract the good effect of getting them out to those who really want one, nevertheless, I think it greatly, greatly, reduced the pressure to pay poachers to get one knowing ahead of time, almost from when they were first discovered that efforts were being made to reproduce them so that anyone who wanted one could have the opportunity to purchase one. And not having to wait decades for it either. I think the same can be said about the new Clivia species C. mirabilis that was recently discovered. Once everyone who really wants knows he or she can easily get one fairly soon after the discovery, without reducing the native population at all, where is the incentive to have massive poaching of wild-collected plants? I think it was a brilliant maneuver in the case of both of these species to announce almost right away the efforts to get these new species out to those collectors who really wanted one. Why they couldn't have done something similar with the cactus species Max mentioned, I'm not really sure. Even for species that have been known for a long time but that are extremely rare, similar efforts can be done. For example, the recent efforts by two men in Australia to sell seeds (last northern winter) and now plants of Worsleya procera to those who desire them all over the world, I think will be an enormous boon to reducing pressure to collect them illegally from the wild. A consignment of 100 Worsleya plants was just shipped to the U.S. this week (and smaller consignments have been sent to a number of other countries/continents). This can't but help in a big way to have the dwindling native population remain more undisturbed. My criticism of the Wollemi Pine prices is that if you way overprice things or otherwise make it very difficult to obtain one, then you hurt your stated effort to reduce the desire to get wild-collected plants. Another example of this is in the realm of animals. I think 20 years ago or so, there was a new breed of cats produced by careful breeding from ten or twelve different lines including some wild cat species to produce a nice house cat that had the same kinds of spotted fur patterns as various leopards and other larger cats. The stated objective was to reduce the desire to have them hunted for their pelts as well as reduce the desire to attempt to raise cubs of the actual large cat species. However, the result of their efforts in my opinion has rendered their stated objective nearly worthless. First, they sold the first number of final litters in the Niemann-Marcus Christmas catalog for a very high price, creating a spectacle but not really doing much about getting these "out there" into the general population that wants them. To this day, the breeding of them is highly controlled and restricted, and even a neutered kitten is IMO hugely expensive. They have managed to produce a variety with a coat that resembles almost exactly that of the snow leopard, which I find particularly striking. But I have no desire to constrain myself to the requirements of owning one, let alone pay the asking price for one. Not that I plan to go on a hunting safari or buy a leopard pelt off the black market any time ever. But it just seems like they're not even trying to accomplish their original stated conservation goal. On the other hand, I'm only human. And I find that I really would love to obtain a number of the Hippeastrum species, for example, that come from the Bolivia/Peru/N. Argentina region of South America. I don't want to get them illegally. I would much much prefer to get seeds or offsets from horticulturally grown plants. But they're not available. Contrast this with efforts such as that of Mauro Peixoto of Brazil who offers seeds from time to time of a number of the Brazilian Hippeastrum species, including the rare more desirable ones. For a mere pittance it seems, I've been able to get my hands on a number of the very desirable Brazilian species without harming any of the wild populations there. I think Osmani is providing a similar service to the native populations of many Chilean geophytes. Anyway, I think I have a good point with some valid examples in this long-winded response of mine. Or am I missing something? --Lee Poulsen Pasadena, California, USDA Zone 10a On Jul 18, 2006, at 11:19 AM, Max Withers wrote: > There is an interesting article in the new Chron. of Higher Ed. about > how the publication of new species leads almost instantly to their > extinction (thanks to poachers and the ubiquitous "German and Japanese > collectors"): > > http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i46/46a01201.htm > > If botanists worked with seed exchanges, they could ameliorate some of > the pressure on rare plants. Of course, in the case of extremely scarce > plants like Ariocarpus bravoanus, exchanges won't help much. See: > http://www.living-rocks.com/bravonthedge.htm >