Magnificent post Tom, thank-you!
Mark

Several members of the forum have mentioned the UK's system of 'National
Collections'. In principle this is a great idea but the Charity that runs
the scheme, Plant Heritage is fatally damaged by its self-imposed slavish
adherence to treaties such as the CBD and CITES. One national collection
holder recently told me that he had collected seed of his favourite genus
on a field trip in South America and had raised and was selling plants
from this source. He was threatened with expulsion from the scheme because
'we cannot be seen to be condoning _____ breaking the law.'

Why not establish an informal network of US-based 'International
Collections'? The huge advantage to basing such an organisation in the USA
is that it is the only large, wealthy country that has not signed the CBD.
You can thumb your nose at it without fear of prosecution. Don't limit the
number of collections per genus. The more, the better. Don't make the
mistake of appointing a committee or allowing one to appoint itself. The
committee will immediately become part of the establishment and want to
insist on complying with the CBD and you'll be back to square one.

As for the CBD, my advice is to ignore it. As I said, treat it with the
contempt it deserves. We cannot change it from within, so let's destroy it
from without.

With any new law it is wise to ask the Roman Senator Cassius's question -
'cui bono', who benefits? In the case of the CBD the answer is
emphatically not biodiversity, for all the reasons previously discussed.
In the case of the CBD, no-one benefits because it is toothless and
routinely ignored. The would-be beneficiaries, however, are the
bureaucrats, who get to attend conferences in fancy hotels to negotiate
these things, their political masters, who can claim to their bone-headed
electorates to be 'doing something' and the business interests that pull
the puppets' strings. It is instructive to quote from an email I received
while I was writing this from a friend who has worked all his life as a
conservation biologist.

'You can imagine that, in 1992 [the 'Earth Summit', where the CBD was
born], every nation state arrived at the table with strict instructions
from their respective despots back at home to fight, tooth and nail, for
their self-interests. More, they are not to sign off on anything that
will damage their development process, as they see it. Translated, this
means that they don't want to sign off to anything that will cost money
for any industry in which the Big Men, back at home, have vested
interests. They don't want to have an aggressive, fang-bearing lion
that'll come and bite them later in the arse.'

Another friend, a high-ranking conservationist, who works at the front
line of bird conservation, wrote even more revealingly in response to an
earlier diatribe of mine against the CBD:

' I especially love your treatise on the CBD - I share your views but can
not express them as I work for an NGO and we have to praise it.'

'We have to praise it.' These two guys are passionate conservationists and
have taken poorly paid, insecure jobs in an effort to promote biodiversity
conservation. Yet they cannot say what they think if they want to keep
these jobs. We are on our own, I'm afraid, but collectively we are up to
the task.

Best wishes,

Tom

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