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A warning


19Silverman93

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Just seen some bloke get banned from the highland nepenthes group on facebook for trying to flog poached N. klossii plants  :ireful2:  so I thought I'd better flag it up here, just in case someone tries to do it here too.

 

EDIT: forgot to pop it in here earlier- he's aparrently going by the name of felix.

Edited by 19Silverman93
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Dam, I hope  its not true !!, but i did see he advertising  the  small N.kiossii ,and know he goes to all these places, he claimed to me  that many areas had been poached before he got there by others, and many site had been wiped out by poachers, , not convinced he is  the  big poacher all have been on about though !, shame  ,

one way to stop poaching is not to buy  the  plants !    only seed  , but sadly many seem to  think that having the  plant at any cost is  worth  it no matter what , 

 

taking out a whole spice is wrong ,  Felix  told me  that all but one plant of  N.rigidifolia  had been taken at the main site , so people get  the word out  do not buy  these pants from  Indonesia ,as all will have been poached!. weather it is Filex or not  I do not know ??

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Guest paul y

and in all of this the only thing that suffers are the plants, efforts should be made to take these plants from poachers and get them back into protected areas or get them into cultivation with an official body somewhere

I abhor poachers and the whole practice sucks from start to finish, if no one buys or secures these plants that have been poached what happens to the plants?

if this was a protected animal major efforts to recover and protect the animal would be made

is there any system in place which insures the poachers are punished whilst protecting the plants,  I keep a tropical marine reef, it contains coral fish and uncounted invert life from every corner of the tropics, every single life form in that tank was collected or farmed responsibly and believe me there is a lot of money in coral, poachers and their wares were dealt with years ago. 

perhaps its time to create an international registration of collectors and traders, make all relevant people register keep it transparent. if the proper id checks are done and validated and if every purchaser agreed to buy through the register only it will help to prevent this sort of thing. 

at the least it will quickly indentify who can and cant be trusted

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and in all of this the only thing that suffers are the plants, efforts should be made to take these plants from poachers and get them back into protected areas or get them into cultivation with an official body somewhere

I abhor poachers and the whole practice sucks from start to finish, if no one buys or secures these plants that have been poached what happens to the plants?

if this was a protected animal major efforts to recover and protect the animal would be made

is there any system in place which insures the poachers are punished whilst protecting the plants,  I keep a tropical marine reef, it contains coral fish and uncounted invert life from every corner of the tropics, every single life form in that tank was collected or farmed responsibly and believe me there is a lot of money in coral, poachers and their wares were dealt with years ago. 

perhaps its time to create an international registration of collectors and traders, make all relevant people register keep it transparent. if the proper id checks are done and validated and if every purchaser agreed to buy through the register only it will help to prevent this sort of thing. 

at the least it will quickly indentify who can and cant be trusted

the logistics of an international register of sellers and collectors would be unbeliavable difficult to sort out. but I do like the idea an who knows, it may even make trading a bit easier- giving us verified contacts to use to sell and buy with and the like

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it was done with ease in the marine coral trade, all you need is a consensus from consumers that they will not buy from anyone not on the register.

cps and icps need to establish a list of good legal traders, then every member of cps icps then agrees to buy only through the listed and vetted traders.

the illegal traders will soon find they have little to no market to trade too,  all collected coral can only be imported into the eu or us if it has the proper certificates, the only way to get those certificates is if the business is vetted and approved by the official bodies, illegal coral collectors just simply cant get their products off the island they were collected from it takes the market out from under their feet and stops it at source

we the consumers can ensure this by pushing for a register it would validate the legal traders whilst hindering the poachers, it is up to us to stop this, it is our responsibility,  we can stop this practice by simply giving the poachers no market.

"we the cp growers of the world will only buy a plant from an approved collector and retailer that meets the minimum standard for responsible and ethical collection and propagation"

in the avon gorge in Bristol are plants that are unique to that location and I know that some of them number less than 10 in wild population, no one has tried to poach and sell because no one wants to buy them.

Edited by paul y
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So who is following these people around to ensure they are not taking coral from from where they are not supposed to. Just sounds like another money making scam to me lining the pockets of the 'official bodies'issuing these pieces of paper.

These reefs are usually in poor countries that are rife with corruption. It is almost a cert that the people out there policeing these collectors will be taking back handers to turn a blind eye and to issue these pieces of paper.

But if it makes you feel comfortable and guilt free then its job done.

I used to keep a marine aquarium and gave it up after taking up scuba diving and seeing these spp in their natural environment, no aquarium can compare to it.

I personally believe that no reef animal should be taken from the environment for the aquarium trade, and the only spp that should be found in the marine tanks are the ones that can be breed or grown in captivity.

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before your perspective becomes too narrow, let me remind you something: in Europe and US we spend relatively high prices on these plants, and that's very attractive for SE asian poachers, but most of us also care very much about conservation, so that maybe just a handful of hidden, ashame people buys poached plants and they are not even proud of that. BUT in SE Asia, most growers/forums/communities/facebook don't really care about the poaching thing, poachers are totally free to poach and sell at very low prices, nobody will say anything, it's just something that doesn't hurt their sensibility that much, in fact poached plants are more appreciated because they are cheaper than those coming from BE or EP. Hey, of course there are exceptions, our long discussion on this topic in the western forums found also numbers of GOOD guys in SE Asia that share our way of thinking, but those good guys can confirm that unfortunately they are not the majority.  

 

So, agreements are not going very far. If I have to look at what happened with Thai poachers since 2004, I can say that: 1) once the market is flooded with the species in question - and that happens relatively quickly - the poaching stops; 2) hybrids are fortunately becoming more fashionable - because yes, very sad, it's all a matter of fashion - and that means that the pure species in the wild are being left alone much more often; 3) fortunately the Thai species are not so attractive, do it didn't take long for the fashion to stop; 4) what me and Trong are doing now, since 1-2 years, is to flood the market with hundreds of free plants - that we got from seed, less than a spike was enough - so that, morality a part, growers just say "hey, why should I buy the plant from the poacher for 2 dollars when I can have it from Trong for 20 cents?". There are not millions of growers, so once you have given away  a few hundred plants, the market is actually saturated. The problem is that a Nepenthes colony on the average is made of 200 plants...

 

Given all this, for every species a good plan should be made to see what the main danger is and how it can be avoided... Klossii? Take a spike, give 1000 plants for free (just shipping price) and the poaching is over. Who's brave enough to do that and renounce to the money? :D 

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Funny coincidence but i was looking around bangkok market this Tuesday. It is certainly true that a large number of Nepenthes on sale are imports, such as rafflesiana, ampullaria etc and not much variety, it looks like the nep fad in thailand has faded, it used to be that you could see truncatas, bicalcaratas etc allong with vikings and other thai plants but much of that seems to have faded away, there are still some local plants there however. Indeed some of the orchid fads have have also faded, gone are rows of cattleyas to be replaced with rows of cheaper thai species (many poached) and hybrids. Its very fashion/fad driven.

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to mantrid,  I was using the coral trade as an example of what could be done to try and stamp out poaching at no point did I say it was perfect and at no point did I invite you to share your personal opinion which remains only that, your personal opinion, it has no bearing on the realities of the methods of farming and sustainable collection undertaken by responsible legally operating companies.  every piece of sps lps invert and piscine life in my tank WAS captive bred or farmed, various multinational companies have gone to massive expense to set up coral and fish farms in these "poor" countries where staff are paid a wage (not per fish collected) artificial reefs spanning hundreds of sq kilometres have been created where coral and fish are farmed sustainably.

ALL of my coral have grown from small frags cut off of mother colonies here in the uk or Germany not a single piece came from the wild.

ALL of my live rock and sand is artificially seeded, as in storm wash and broken rock pieces which have been cured in live sea water, not a single piece came from a reef in the wild

ALL of the 9 fish in my sps tank were captive bred either here in the uk or at captive breeding sites in various parts of the tropics.

there are many many reef keepers who pride themselves on there total captive bred tank in fact we are the majority.

so yeah all in all I do feel completely guilt free about it and if youd like to argue with anyone about it id suggest you give tmc a call or go to your local reef shop and state your opinion nice and loud in there, or go to one of the many reef keeping forums and have it out with them they will tell you that going scuba diving whilst on holiday  does not qualify you to dictate to others what they should or shouldn't keep.

like I said I was using it as an example as to the lengths that can be taken to help prevent poaching

ive yet to hear a reasonable suggestion from yourself regarding the same

and on another more obvious point, if I was to hike through the jungles of borneo in awe of these amazing plants in their natural habitat would that then give me the right to tell others not to keep them if it cant be bred at home?  no id personally be more concerned about pulling my head out of my ass.

Edited by paul y
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Paul (and others) - don't forget there is supposed to be a complete ban on the trade in ivory - but that doesn't stop the elephants from being slaughtered.

 

As Marcello say's, the only way is to produce masses of plants from seed (many people, myself included, aren't interested in TC clones) to make poaching pointless because nobody wants the plants anymore.

 

This is starting to happen for many species, due to the amount of wild seed which has been available for several years now.

Some of this seed was pricey and went in a flash, when first available. Now prices have dropped to almost nothing and it often doesn't even sell out.

It needs this to happen for the others species now - or 'official' organisations to make the seed available. But either way, once the seed is getting out there, prices will drop and the demand will drop.

 

But all the time there is a huge demand that isn't being met, there will be an incentive for 'poachers'.

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Paul (and others) - don't forget there is supposed to be a complete ban on the trade in ivory - but that doesn't stop the elephants from being slaughtered.

 

As Marcello say's, the only way is to produce masses of plants from seed (many people, myself included, aren't interested in TC clones) to make poaching pointless because nobody wants the plants anymore.

 

This is starting to happen for many species, due to the amount of wild seed which has been available for several years now.

Some of this seed was pricey and went in a flash, when first available. Now prices have dropped to almost nothing and it often doesn't even sell out.

It needs this to happen for the others species now - or 'official' organisations to make the seed available. But either way, once the seed is getting out there, prices will drop and the demand will drop.

 

But all the time there is a huge demand that isn't being met, there will be an incentive for 'poachers'.

agree with this 100% I'd be happy tojust say, pay the postage for a sample of seed and then grow them on as part of an effort to introduce an endangered species into cultivation. the proceeds could be put back into conservation efforts for wild populations of said plants even.

 

also as an aside to paul, how do they farm coral exactly? you've piqued my interest now :smile:

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Guest paul y

all coral can be propagated by taking cuttings, its called fragging, a very small section of coral is fragged from a mother colony and then grown on the artificial reef, coral grows quickly and in a short time they have a new mother colony on the artificial reef, that colony is then fragged creating hundreds more fragments, they are then also grown on the reef until they are of marketable size. one small section the length of your little finger is all that is needed from the wild to create tons upon tons of live coral frags that are sold and in a huge number of cases tonnage of frags are returned to natural reefs year upon year.

the same applies to fish and inverts, huge breeding areas have been created which can easily meet the world wide demand and wild collection is fast becoming a thing of the past.

to be fair though the global marine keeping trade massively eclipses the carnivorous plant world trade, I just don't think the money is in these plants to a large enough degree that makes it viable to protect through responsible practice and trade

I agree that a mass grow and hand out will remove the "needs" of the market and thus end the poaching, let the seeds flow!

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all coral can be propagated by taking cuttings, its called fragging, a very small section of coral is fragged from a mother colony and then grown on the artificial reef, coral grows quickly and in a short time they have a new mother colony on the artificial reef, that colony is then fragged creating hundreds more fragments, they are then also grown on the reef until they are of marketable size. one small section the length of your little finger is all that is needed from the wild to create tons upon tons of live coral frags that are sold and in a huge number of cases tonnage of frags are returned to natural reefs year upon year.

the same applies to fish and inverts, huge breeding areas have been created which can easily meet the world wide demand and wild collection is fast becoming a thing of the past.

to be fair though the global marine keeping trade massively eclipses the carnivorous plant world trade, I just don't think the money is in these plants to a large enough degree that makes it viable to protect through responsible practice and trade

I agree that a mass grow and hand out will remove the "needs" of the market and thus end the poaching, let the seeds flow!

all very interesting, thanks :smile:

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Its a public discussion and I am free to give my personal opinion. Thats what these things are for, to air our views on a subject. Giving my personal opinion is not dictating to others. At no point have I told YOU what you should and shouldnt do.

Im pleased to hear your ethical approach to your hobby. Shame that others dont. Ive known people that stock up an aquarium then a couple of months later they do it again because 90% of what they bought has died, and the aquarium shop will keep selling to them even though they know they dont have the knowledge or resources to make it successful. Its wasteful even if they are captive bred spp.

The aquaculture of reef species is promising but still in its infancy, and is small scale compared to harvesting of natural reefs.

Reef fish have complex life cycles, most spend the larva stage in the plankton of the open sea feeding on other planktonic organisms. Most of these fish cant be breed in tanks. Only a few species that lay eggs on substrates are bred in tanks comercially.

Theres all the other commonly collected invertebrates too, clams, sea slugs, various shrimps, tube worms etc I am not aware of these in aquaculture at least not outside of the research stage.

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Funny coincidence but i was looking around bangkok market this Tuesday. It is certainly true that a large number of Nepenthes on sale are imports, such as rafflesiana, ampullaria etc and not much variety, it looks like the nep fad in thailand has faded, it used to be that you could see truncatas, bicalcaratas etc allong with vikings and other thai plants but much of that seems to have faded away, there are still some local plants there however. Indeed some of the orchid fads have have also faded, gone are rows of cattleyas to be replaced with rows of cheaper thai species (many poached) and hybrids. Its very fashion/fad driven.

One thing i didnt make clear is that im not convinced there are less thai nep species being sold in the market... (in terms of quantity). Most of these may well be seed grown plants but the demand is still present.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Paul (and others) - don't forget there is supposed to be a complete ban on the trade in ivory - but that doesn't stop the elephants from being slaughtered.

And who are the [edited by moderator] that still kill elephants for ivory? Maybe we could make a page with all their photographs?

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And who are the [edited by moderator] that still kill elephants for ivory? Maybe we could make a page with all their photographs?

geez Dave are you self medicating,i am aware you know this is offensive so why?

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