Mexican Plants post 27/11/1997

[IanW]

Sure, but they can't apply those restrictions outside of their own borders. Mexico has no legal authority inside the United Kingdom for example - in Mexico general abortion is illegal, but that does not stop the fact that a Mexican citizen could come to the UK and have that operation, once they're here there's nothing the Mexican authorities can do because at that point it falls entirely under UK jurisdiction.

That's why they have to rely on only what is enforceable under international treaty. For what you say to be true we'd have to have a treaty with Mexico stating that we will apply their laws that go over and above Cites relating to this issue, and I'd be surprised if we have such a treaty.

[ragamala]

Ian, Cites forbids trade in certain stuff without a permit. This includes ALL cacti and seed out of Mexico, since 1997. What's not to understand here?

OK let's move on. Before Mexico signed up loads of plants and seeds were obtained and found their way into circulation. These can not be regarded in the same way as Mexican cacti which were only newly described AFTER Mexico signed up, and which to our knowledge have NEVER had any legal export permit. The latter are clearly originating from unlawfully obtained material. Which is not to say there isn't loads of other stuff which wasn't exported unlawfully, but that's the only guide we have, as Bill put it at the start of this thread.

[Paul in Essex]

Can someone please clarify - is this just cacti that it applies to or all plants? No-one has mentioned anything other than cacti so far in the discussions on here but I get the feeling it should apply to all plants.

[Jim_Mercer]

I've not managed to find the Mexican legislation yet but have found this from Kew http://assets.kew.org/files/CITES%20%26 ... 202012.pdf. This follows the Cites convention of listing species in appendices but the European rules appear as annexes http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/ ... 20&from=EN.

One notable point is that seeds are generally allowed to be traded except for seeds from Cactaceae spp. exported from Mexico, and to seeds from Beccariophoenix madagascariensis and Neodypsis decaryi exported from Madagascar.

More interesting reading here https://portals.iucn.org/library/efiles ... 97-041.pdf which does mention some Mexican legislation that covers cacti and other succulents...

The General Law of Ecological Balance and Protection of the Environment, passed by Mexico’s Congress in 1986,

Another law which has relevance to succulent plant conservation is the Federal Forestry Law (Ley Federal
Forestal). This law was recently amended (late 1996) and now, once again, includes and regulates non-woody plants. Perhaps even more significant is the typification in the Penal Code of illegal removal of plants, including cacti and other succulents, making such illegal removal a ‘delito ambiental’ (an environmental crime) with jail sentences now possible of three to six years

[Paul in Essex]

Thanks for those links. They make interesting reading. Not much said about seeds of non-cacti.

[IanW]

Ian, Cites forbids trade in certain stuff without a permit. This includes ALL cacti and seed out of Mexico, since 1997. What's not to understand here?

No, that's not what Cites forbids. Cites allows for trade of Appendix II plants with permit. Mexico themselves take that a step further by banning all trade of all Cacti but that's enforced by Mexico, not Cites. Mexico does not have extra-territorial reach, thus, again, for Mexico's laws to be enforced outside of Mexico it has to have a treaty with other nations it wishes to enforce those laws with. From what I can see of Cites, the only way for this to be enforced via Cites in other nations is if the plants were and remained to be Appendix 1, but many aren't to start with and even those are apparently become Appendix 2 if propagated.

So what this means is that if a country chooses not to enforce Mexico's laws, and someone in that country acquires an illegaly smuggled plant out of Mexico, even if Appendix 1, but then produces seed and seedlings of that plant, then that country's authority may grant export permits for those seedlings, and at that point it appears it's quite possibly a legal permit under Cites and regardless of what Mexico may feel about it even if the original plant was not acquired legally.

This is really the problem, it's not clear that just because Mexico creates laws over and above those provisioned as a result of Cites that those laws hold any weight outside of the borders of Mexico. You're conflating Mexican laws with Cites, and the two things are quite different.

This is where clarity is required - you're stating fact where you have not the requisite knowledge to do so. It needs an expert in the relevant law.

[ragamala]

Ian. The Mexican amendment was endorsed by Cites in 1997 at the Zimbabwe convention.

"Prior to September of 1997, all Appendix II cactus seed were exempt
from CITES requirements consistent with the exemption for all Appendix
II CITES listed seed and pollen. Due to illegal collecting in Mexico of
newly discovered and rare Appendix II cacti, the seed of which was protected
by Mexican law but not CITES, the 10th Conference of the Parties to
CITES held in Zimbabwe in 1997listed all Appendix II cactus seed of
Mexican species from Mexico. Wild collected Appendix II Mexican cactus
seed now requires a CITES Export Permit and seed obtained from propagated
cactus in Mexico requires a Certificate of Artificial Propagation. The
stricter Appendix I permit requirements remain unchanged."

http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_p005/ ... 29_138.pdf

Also it is clear from Bill Maddams in the January 1998 BCSJ what the situation was. He refers to

"the decision at the last Cites confenerence, at the instigation of the Mexican government, to grant CITES II status to the seed of all Mexican cacti, and to control the export of such seed.

He went on to say it was difficult to see how the administrative procedures would be set up, and this would not affect the availability of seed of many Mexican taxa that were already in widespread cultivation outside the country.

Please do not accuse me of not having checked my facts. I am an environmental researcher and it is not in my nature to speak from guesswork. I find your insinuation insulting, but frankly I am more concerned that you are misreading the situation. This is a matter of CITES international agreement. the fact that Mexico instigated the increased protection for its own heritage is beside the point. This has been enshrined in CITES, to which the UK was a signatory, as is the EU. This is no sombrero-waving pancho, this is the international agreement to which our country is committed.

Please see also the CITES document re Zimbabwe 1997 here

https://cites.org/sites/default/files/e ... dments.pdf

"The annotation placed against CACTACEAE spp.
included in Appendix II to indicate that all parts and
derivatives, except specified ones, are subject to the
provisions of the Convention, was amended to indicate
that the seeds from Mexican cacti originating in Mexico
are also subject to the provisions of the Convention. "

Hopefully that is clear enough for yoy.

[IanW]

And you've found the UK legislation that implements the amendment?

[ragamala]

And you've found the UK legislation that implements the amendment?

The UK signed up to CITES. You think every time CITES is amended the UK has to pass another bill through parliament? Get real. We signed up to CITES in August 1996. Later we joined the EU. CITES is implemented within Europe through two EC Regulations (338/97 and 865/06 as amended). The 06 regulations post-date the 1997 Zimbabwe agreement, as you may realise.

Frankly I find your apparent inability to do your own homework a trifle tedious.

Try this

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/ ... 20&from=EN

[IanW]

I'm not really sure why you're getting so angry, I've made it clear throughout that you might be right, but when I do something so simple as ask if you've got the evidence for the claim you're making you throw your teddy out the pram. That typically tells me that you're not entirely confident in your argument, as if you were you wouldn't get uptight. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that I've pointed out to you I agree regardless of the legality I think the spirit of the law is reasonable enough in itself, so I'm not even in inherent disagreement with you.

If you don't know then that's the answer - "I don't know", but right now you seem to be asserting things and losing your rag if anyone so much as asks why you're so certain of what you're claiming, rather than you simply explaining why you're so certain and providing the backing evidence that gives you that certainty.

I've been looking myself at what you say given that you've not been forthcoming with evidence of much value yourself, and I found the amendment you're referring to (CoP 10.67). You have to understand that international law isn't as simple as you seem to imply, I'm sure you're a great environmental researcher, but you're not a lawyer in international law, neither am I. I do know however that sovereign states are the only ones that can amend the laws of their nations, when they sign up to a treaty such as Cites they don't automatically become bound by some set of laws, they have to implement Cites in their own national legislation. Depending on how it's implemented, then yes, it may in fact require changes each time Cites changes - some countries just aren't comfortable with giving up sovereignty to international treaty, that's what Brexit was all about even though the UK relationship with the EU was indeed such that we have to implement EU law ourselves, rather than have it imposed on us as per popular myth.

Now that I've dug out the amendment myself, I can see that yes, it's just an amendment to Appendix II, so I think you're probably right that this sort of change wouldn't require a local law change (at least in the UK - I'd be amazed if we'd implemented it such that it did). Had you simply provided this you may have saved yourself a lot of apparent stress.

But there is still a fundamentally unanswered question here that I've been pointing out all along, that you seem to be declaring the answer to without evidencing, and that's that it's still not clear that if someone has an illegally obtained plant and produces seed of it, and then manages to obtain a Cites permit from their country due to lax enforcement, whether that seed remains illegal. It's still not clear from the Cites documentation that that's the case - the Appendix listing itself still clearly only says this applies to seed exported from Mexico, it does not clarify whether seed exported from elsewhere, albeit originating from a plant illegaly obtained from Mexico is covered. Let me be clear, before you get angry again, I very much suspect it might be, but I just cannot find the text on Cites own site clarifying this, much less the actual implementation in our national law. People are asking for clarification, and you declaring things without evidencing them unfortunately just does not provide that, no matter how much you may wish it to be the case - if you know for sure that legality always follows through regardless of whether a country provides a valid Cites certificate for the offspring or seed of a plant obtained illegaly then please point us to it minus the anger, that's all we are looking for.

If anyone's interested, here's the actual note on their site, you're looking for #4 a) which states that all Cactaceae are included under Appendix II except seeds, apart from those coming from Mexico:

https://www.cites.org/eng/app/appendices.php#hash4

For what it's worth also for anyone interested I actually looked for the decision on this amendment to see if I could find the debate around, but whilst I found the original Mexican proposal, and a note saying it had been passed to the Standing Committee, I couldn't find any actual text on the outcome and what was discussed in considering it (but given it's live on the Appendix document, it was obviously accepted). Here's the original proposal:

https://cites.org/sites/default/files/e ... 0-P-67.pdf