I haven’t seen much evidence of plant poaching here in Vermont but I would say something if I saw something. More generally, I worry that iNat could be used for such purposes (I’m sure it has been). I don’t know if the poacher in the article used iNat but I guess it doesn’t matter since he probably would have found the plants he wanted one way or the other. That’s my take-away from this thread: the only way to curb large-scale poaching like this is to flood the market with cultivated plants.
Two days ago, while trying to identify some trilliums introduced to Benton County, Oregon, I came across a remarkable story about an Oregon man who crossed the California border in 1947 and there he poached three trillium plants. He brought the plants back to Oregon and propagated them from seed in great quantities. By 1968 his annual crop of flowering-size plants had reached about 15,000. That’s remarkable considering that it requires 5–8 years to take a seed to a mature flowering trillium plant. Clearly he had made this his life’s work.
The man sold his plants both wholesale and retail around the world. This partially explains why this particular species of trillium is so widely available on the Internet today. I wonder how many would-be poachers were deterred as a result of this man’s work? I don’t condone poaching in any form but if California officials are really concerned about a particular plant, maybe they should partner wih legitimate growers and nurseries to beat the poachers at their own game. Heck, the officials could sell licenses to the growers.
We are pretty sure the reason a rare patch of American Hart’s Tongue Fern is gone now is because the find got published (not just in scientific media)…that included location of the find :( Been gone for a long time now, since before my time as a caver, I just know those who found it initially. I mean…it could have died naturally, but it was gone like the next year to my understanding, hence the suspicion.
Many Dudleya seized in Humboldt County have been replanted in an effort organized by California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the National Parks Service and the California Native Plant Society:
However, any replanting can only partially mitigate the damage. Many plants won’t survive and given that plants are often seized some time after they are poached, there’s a pretty high likelihood they will be replanted a fair distance from where they were removed, leading to impacts on the species’s gene pool.
“One way to prevent the poaching of rare plants is simply to cultivated as many of the coveted plants as possible, thus reducing the market value of stolen plants”
I feel like this is oft repeated, but I don’t see it actually reflected in literature nor practice. The market isn’t just supply and demand; there’s the intersection of poverty and norms (mostly national pride, I’m imagining) that is overlooked. Plus, induced demand is never considered in this rhetoric.
Propagating desirable plants is definitely one way to reduce poaching, and it can be quite effective when the motivation is financial and the plants in question are not difficult to propagate (germinate well, don’t take long to reach saleable condition).
There are lots of reputable native plant nurseries in California, and coincidentally I bought a small D. farinosa from one of them a week ago, so availability isn’t the only factor here. As the article and commenters have suggested, the ability to collect large quantities of mature plants rather than grow them to that size appears to have been a factor motivating this poacher. A similar economic incentive is behind the wholesale removal of large cacti from locations in Mexico to sell for use in landscaping U.S. gardens.
Another factor in plant poaching can be rarity, especially when combined with the charisma of showy flowers or sculptural cactus stems. A few poachers are motivated to take plants from natural habitats because those species are not the ones being propagated.
These factors are among the considerations that conservation professionals and iNat curators need to assess in determining whether a species should have its locations automatically obscured on iNat. D. farinosa does not currently have its locations obscured on iNat, and I can see the logic for that. This is a species that you can find on most of the rocky coastal bluffs from San Luis Obispo County to southern Oregon. If you set out to poach these plants, you wouldn’t need to use the 2900+ iNat records to help you. Equally, many other species in the genus are much rarer and it seems important to obscure locations to raise the bar for poachers.
Unfortunately, it seems like the consequences for the poacher were hardly more than a slap on the wrist. Enforcement is one thing, but there has to be some significant legal deterrence to back it up. I’m mildly suspicious of any of the redwood souvenir shops I see up there now selling redwood burls and redwood products to tourists, too. I haven’t tried, but I can’t imagine any of them being particularly receptive to questions about where their products come from whether they’re legal or not.
The In Defense of Plants podcast conducted a really interesting interview with Dr. Jared Margulies (who’s featured prominently in the OP’s article) about Dudleya poaching.
Over here, collecting and selling certain “forest products” has traditionally been a way for the local poor to earn a little bit extra to make ends meet. Elders would teach their youngster how to do it in ways that was sustainable so they could reharvest the same spots again in future years. However, poaching nowadays more closely resembles organized crime, bringing in hired collectors (often Hispanic immigrants in need of money) and driving them out to collection sites at night. One person here and there collecting a few things doesn’t do much damage, but this organized poaching hauling away trash bags full of plant material that isn’t harvested very sustainably because the people doing it are in a hurry and don’t know any better can be very devastating and lead to extirpation of entire populations.
I recognize your point. And for the record, I have no exotic animals or plants (except for those descended from domesticated stock) in the house. Mexico is a big nation and adherence to the law is marginal, even in a place like Mexico City. I’m not sure who was buying the birds. They were on a route not well traveled by ‘outsiders’, but the clear intent was to sell them.
I understand the hardship of the rural poor, wherever they may be. I’ve seen, and experienced poverty. My Masters was in Development Practice (Indigenous).
It’s a hangover from my childhood, but I have a visceral dislike of poachers. For those folks, it was probably nothing - they did not know the impact they may have had, and they needed to live. I like to be a ‘solutions’ person, but I’m not sure awareness would have made them act differently. In @teellbee s post, the poacher was clearly not in poverty if he could afford a flight to the US.
Frankly, I don’t know what to do about poaching.
Thanks to this thread, I got sidetracked into reading this recent thesis on perceptions of poaching in Southern Appalachia. It goes into what motivates people to poach, covering hunting, fishing, and plant digging. Rangers stated that the TV shows definitely had an impact on the amount of ginseng poaching going on (page 50). Another recent trend along with that is that a lot of those apprehended for plant poaching appear to be drug addicts (page 51). Plant poaching is seen as primarily motivated by monetary gain (page 65), e.g. motivated by drug addiction. Illegal hunting in contrast is mostly done for bragging rights. This may certainly just be a snapshot of the opinions of a small group of people asked. Notably, the second-most poached plant in our area is missing from the entire discussion in this thesis.