Illegal Cacti and the BCSS

For the discussion of topics related to the conservation, cultivation, propagation and exhibition of cacti & other succulents.
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Stuart
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Re: Illegal Cacti and the BCSS

Post by Stuart »

This group of Mexican plants have been freely available for the past few years, both at UK cactus marts and ELK. Seed is also easy to come by, the Forum Seed Pool is the first place to look! Any 'legal' seed from Mexico wouldn't make any difference other than making it impossible to tell which plants were grown from 'legal' or 'illegal' seed, unless they're sold with some sort of certificate.
Sadly, there are those, mostly in the Far East, who want an 'authentic Mexican plant' rather than a nice clean seed grown plant or grafted plant. No amount of artificial propagation is going to stop the demand for habitat plants from those who see them as something more special than nursery plants.
Mexico is a pretty lawless place these days, they can't stop the drug cartels to there's no chance of them having any interest in habitat stripping. When I've been to Mexican cactus areas, the local children soon spot foreigners and come out with trays of plants to sell. They even know that cristates sell for more and go searching for them after school. I've taken photos of the children with the plants which I've included in talks in the past but haven't bought the plants. They even sell large bags of Aztekium/Geohintonia seed. The 'seed' consists of the growing point of plants cut out with a mass of wool and plant body. How much seed is actually in these bags is anybody's guess. The remaining plants are presumably now growing as nice multi-headed clusters.
Other than in the tourist areas, I wouldn't fancy a trip to Mexico nowadays.

Stuart
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Ali Baba
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Re: Illegal Cacti and the BCSS

Post by Ali Baba »

I have followed this thread with interest, not least because I was responsible for Astrophytum caput-medusae appearing briefly on the BCSS seed list. As a receiver of stolen goods in the form of seed of said species from a well known nurseryman in the USA, and the owner of two plants derived from the seed, plus a guilty conscience from raising and giving away more than 300 seeds from the mother plants, I have a question for those on both sides of the argument.
What should I do now?
Should I destroy my plants?
Should I continue to cross pollinate and give seed away (obviously not via any BCSS meeting or affiliated website )?
Should I let them live and retire them from breeding?
Should I ask the Seed Pool to return my seeds?

What’s the practical decision I should make? What is morally the right thing to do?
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ragamala
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Re: Illegal Cacti and the BCSS

Post by ragamala »

Ali Baba wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 5:12 pm What’s the practical decision I should make? What is morally the right thing to do?
Have you considered harakiri? :wink:

x
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Ali Baba
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Re: Illegal Cacti and the BCSS

Post by Ali Baba »

ragamala wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 5:48 pm
Ali Baba wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 5:12 pm What’s the practical decision I should make? What is morally the right thing to do?
Have you considered harakiri? :wink:

x
No 😂😂
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Tina
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Re: Illegal Cacti and the BCSS

Post by Tina »

Ignore the fool, medication must have run out.
Ali baba
What should I do now?- continue to enjoy your plants why else are we in this hobby, most of us are impressed that you can grow them so well & produce seed regularly, I have had my plant for nearly 3 years & its survived but not that happy.

Should I destroy my plants? No of course not ( I'll adopt them if it comes to that :lol: ), that would achieve nothing, we had this rubbish with Ernie & habitat plants, very few cactus & succulents are endemic to the UK .

Should I continue to cross pollinate and give seed away (obviously not via any BCSS meeting or affiliated website )? YES please, I have a few little seedlings from your seed & would love to try more, I find them challenging.
Should I let them live and retire them from breeding? No of course not the more home produced seed the less demand on habitat plants
Should I ask the Seed Pool to return my seeds? NO I'm sure we are all rushing to contact Chris to get our rare seed.

I have done a quick check and I have some gaps in my illegal plants so anyone have a spare M. bertholdii, its one I really like the look of & must have.
Also Mammillaria perezdelarosae subsp. andersoniana although it may be one I got from David Kirkbrights collection I need to post a picture.
Last edited by Tina on Sat Aug 07, 2021 12:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Tina

varied collection of succulents and cacti but I especially like Euphorbia's, Ariocarpus and variegated agaves.

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Ali Baba
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Re: Illegal Cacti and the BCSS

Post by Ali Baba »

Tina wrote: Fri Aug 06, 2021 2:19 pm Ignore the fool, medication must have run out.
Ali baba
What should I do now?- continue to enjoy your plants why else are why in this hobby, most of us are impressed that you can grow them so well & produce seed regularly, I have had my plant for nearly 3 years & its survived but not that happy.

Should I destroy my plants? No of course not ( I'll adopt them if it comes to that :lol: ), that would achieve nothing, we had this rubbish with Ernie & habitat plants, very few cactus & succulents are endemic to the UK .

Should I continue to cross pollinate and give seed away (obviously not via any BCSS meeting or affiliated website )? YES please, I have a few little seedlings from your seed & would love to try more, I find them challenging.
Should I let them live and retire them from breeding? No of course not the more home produced seed the less demand on habitat plants
Should I ask the Seed Pool to return my seeds? NO I'm sure we are all rushing to contact Chris to get our rare seed.

I have done a quick check and I have some gaps in my illegal plants so anyone have a spare M. bertholdii, its one I really like the look of & must have.
Also Mammillaria perezdelarosae subsp. andersoniana although it may be one I got from David Kirkbrights collection I need to post a picture.
😊
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KarlR
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Re: Illegal Cacti and the BCSS

Post by KarlR »

ragamala wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 10:57 am
Karl, Thanks again for the politeness of the reply.

But I am afraid your argument about "need" is based on false logic. I never said anybody "needed "to grow any species, legal or otherwise. Your invention is a straw man argument, and fallacious.

I have already made my position on demand clear. But I shall try again to explain. BCSS - and its chairman - should be working NOT to exert it's members "rights" to import and grow species which are now proscribed, it should be working to reduce or eliminate demand through greater implementation of international regulation and law. This is where the BCSS input on Cites should be directed. Once again., the idea that we UK growers can improve the situation by our growing and propagating of certain species, rather than tackling the main faults existing in the current rules and their implementation, is working in the wrong direction.

I perform no acrobatics, I speak straight and hope this is clear from my posts, if not I will try to explain further.

If the BCSS is to have a direct (or more likely indirect and ineffectual) input into Cites, I believe this should be an issue put to members, not left in the hands and personal views of figureheads, elected or otherwise. Nor left to members of this forum to influence our officials.
Thank you in return, ragamala, for keeping things polite, though I really think we shouldn't have to thank each other. It's perfectly possible to disagree vehemently without resorting to impoliteness.

I do not agree that I created a straw man. You were the one who talked about needing to grow M. bertholdii, and by extension all the post-'97 species. I simply think it's strange to hold the position that it's no problem to grow a pre-'97 species no matter how that was acquired, but growing a post-'97 species shows a lack of moral courage. I'm not on board with that.

You say that it is rarely if ever justifiable to break the law. I think that is a strange position to hold too. You only have to throw a glance at any country's past to find laws that we'd consider reprehensible today, and well worth breaking. And all countries have laws that are in need of revision or removal. This Mexican law is not sacrosanct. It is not beyond scrutiny.

You seem to believe that greater regulation, tougher laws (and presumably harsher punishments), and maybe international bans is the solution to deal with poaching. I disagree. I don't think you have to look any further than the illegal trade in animals and animal parts such as Rhino horns to realise that all those laws and regulations and punishments may never be enough. Or the whole drug trade which is illegal more or less across the globe. There are people all over the world willing to risk life in prison or worse to sell drugs. The war on drugs will likely be declared lost across most of the world in a few decades. And the way forward is probably controlled and heavily regulated sale of those substances. But that's another debate so let's not go there.

You say your position on demand is known, but I'm on mobile so it's difficult to go look for a quote. I can't remember if you've said anything other than people shouldn't want to grow these species so there shouldn't be a demand. I think that's a very naive position, if that is indeed what you think. My position is that if there's a demand for rhino horn and there are people willing to pay enough to have poachers risk their lives to kill the rhinos, then there is enough of a demand for habitat plants to pay poachers and risk punishment. You won't remove that kind of demand by hoping people will suddenly decide to stop buying.

Now the question is really whether or not all these buyers want habitat material specifically or whether it's a case of cultivated supply being scarce and expensive enough that poached plants are easier to come by and cheaper. If it's exclusively the former then hobbyists or nurseries distributing material won't make a difference. But if it's the latter then it will. And any hobbyist can make a difference then. Like AliBaba who distributed hundreds of caput-medusae seeds to the BCSS. That could mean that one or more hobbyists might get caput-medusae that way instead of going on eBay or Facebook and finding something from habitat.

That's the way hobbyists could help conservation in this respect. It is an indirect way of reducing the pressure on habitats by creating a supply of cultivated material. If there is no supply of cultivated material it doesn't mean that the demand magically goes away.

As for proof, I don't have any off the top of my head. But I know e.g. Kew and other botanical gardens have extracted habitat material to produce seeds and plants of the Wollemi pine to sell. To the best of my knowledge this was done to help preserve the species by reducing or removing habitat pressure from poaching. I guess you'll point out that this was done legally with all the necessary paperwork done, and that this makes all the difference. I would agree if there were any such programs setup for cacti, either in collaboration with botanical gardens, nurseries, organisations like the BCSS or private growers. But there are none, at least not to my knowledge.
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Re: Illegal Cacti and the BCSS

Post by esp »

Can someone please explain?
If UK grower 1 buys seeds of one of the recent mexican discoveries from UK grower 2, who produced the seeds in cultivation, what law(s) has UK grower 1 broken?
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Ernie
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Re: Illegal Cacti and the BCSS

Post by Ernie »

Tina wrote: Fri Aug 06, 2021 2:19 pm Ignore the fool, medication must have run out.
Ali baba
What should I do now?- continue to enjoy your plants why else are we in this hobby, most of us are impressed that you can grow them so well & produce seed regularly, I have had my plant for nearly 3 years & its survived but not that happy.

Should I destroy my plants? No of course not ( I'll adopt them if it comes to that :lol: ), that would achieve nothing, we had this rubbish with Ernie & habitat plants, very few cactus & succulents are endemic to the UK .

Should I continue to cross pollinate and give seed away (obviously not via any BCSS meeting or affiliated website )? YES please, I have a few little seedlings from your seed & would love to try more, I find them challenging.
Should I let them live and retire them from breeding? No of course not the more home produced seed the less demand on habitat plants
Should I ask the Seed Pool to return my seeds? NO I'm sure we are all rushing to contact Chris to get our rare seed.

I have done a quick check and I have some gaps in my illegal plants so anyone have a spare M. bertholdii, its one I really like the look of & must have.
Also Mammillaria perezdelarosae subsp. andersoniana although it may be one I got from David Kirkbrights collection I need to post a picture.
Tina. For an intelligent person from time to time you display a high level of ignorance. At no time have I ever said those with habitat collected plants should destroy them. Please demonstrate where I have said that otherwise keep your rubbish to yourself please :evil: . I have been consistent in saying that that the BCSS needs to exclude habitat collected plants from shows to demonstrate it really cares about habitat stripping. Of course you don't want that because you have so many, some bought from me! I know it and many others do, that many members of the BCSS have habitat collected plants, its a simple fact. We all know your desire to aquire silver trinkets which is fine for you but don't attribute to me comments I have not made thank you. For the record. I don't advocate members destroying habitat collected plants, that serves no purpose but equally we should not be show casing them at events organised by the BCSS. To continue to do so does not help the cause.
'Eternity is but a a brief moment away'
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Ernie
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Re: Illegal Cacti and the BCSS

Post by Ernie »

This whole debate misses the fundemental point. There is an obsession for people to have something others have not got, matters not that the rare plant is often not much to look at whereas there are many very common lovely plants readily available and its that which the society should be pushing. I am due to give a talk at my local branch showing photographs of my current collection which for the most part is made up of readily available commercially raised plants explaining how I keep them in top condition. I am sure that a lot of cactus and succulents purchased from garden centres go to cactus heaven because the owners don't know how to look after them properly.
For the record, for many years I collected habitat collected plants including many rare ones which I spent a lot of money on, and yes because I wanted something special that others could not afford. When I saw the light and sold the collection most went to members of this forum at the time, some of whom remain members today.
Something has to change because, like a lot of wildlife. habitat stripping will continue.
Sadly its a human failing that often they don't want to know the truth and shut their eyes to the obvious.
Anyway re some of the points raised in this thread. If seed is available through proper channels then fine I have no problem with that at all. Likewise the BCSS has a duty to respect the laws of other countries and indeed CITES. PEACE
'Eternity is but a a brief moment away'
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