Has anyone read "Orchid Fever?"

[RosieC]

Originally Posted by WhiteRabbit

Rosie - I think you are thinking of "The Orchid Thief" - tho googling, it seems the original story in the New Yorker was titled "Orchid Fever" - the movie "Adaptation" is a fictional account about the attempt to adapt the story for film - I liked the movie well enough til it got to the crazy part about the Nic Cage character going off into the swamps with the Susan Orlean character - then it was just too weird for me

I think you are right. I've confused the two.

[WhiteRabbit]

Originally Posted by RosieC

I think you are right. I've confused the two.

easy to do

[cday2inflorida]

I raised exotic birds for years. I had birds before CITES regulated the import of birds. I never had issues, but I know people all over the country that did. They would swoop in and "take possession" of birds. Many people lost tens of thousands of dollars in the sweeps. They were legit in every way except they had them way before you had to keep records and receipts. Birds can be very long lived, especially psittacines.
Collecting and breeding causes people to do crazy things. As in orchids, there are many jealous motives. Many of those confiscated birds ended up with people that collected. They essentially went from someone's backyard that wasn't politically connected in the avian world to another backyard where that person was well connected.

[Paul Mc]

Man, I'm saving all my receipts now! LOL... I'm laughing, but I never realized the issues before I started reading this book. And even then, I do realize it is only from one person's (namely the author's) point of view. It's just absolutely amazing to me though.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

While not everyone or every institution partakes in actions that serve their own desires and interests. I'm aware of how certain institutions that are very well connected to their respective governments do have intentions to monopolize and regulate the plant trade for the purposes of personal gain or profit.

They just hide it fairly well.

This is not a conspiracy theory. There is evidence for this. You just have to sniff it out. The evidence is not always plentiful, and it isn't always easy to find. If evidence is found, then you gotta figure out if there are biases associated with that evidence, if there is truth behind it, or if it is completely fabricated.


Perhaps a nugget of truth that is not necessarily specifically connected to the orchid trade itself such as seed patents or patents on genetically modified plants will offer some insight as to what I'm talking about. Again, while this example is not necessarily specifically connected to the orchid trade, I feel that it serves as a good illustration for what can and does occasionally, generally happen behind the scenes in our hobby.


Confiscation raids don't always happen, nor does it necessarily happen often, but it certainly has been known to occur.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

However, orchid poaching is big business too, and this is a bit more clear as to why. It does however, have some grey areas too.

For instance...

What if some of these orchid poachers (not all) take fairly good care of removing the orchid from the wild, so as to not damage the goods they're selling or completely remove entire populations of them from the wild?

You ever hear of people saying, "Don't buy from those poachers, they're damaging the environment, and they're offering plants that will undoubtedly die anyways, so you're basically just throwing your money away." What if there was evidence that this wasn't always the case?

While there is no doubt that a large majority of poachers leave the environment scarred, is it all of them?

What if some of these wild collected orchids look raggedy at first, but take off like wildfire after they've made the adjustment, provided that they were properly accommodated to in cultivation? What if there was concrete evidence for this?

Then how would you think of these people?

Is there something to be learned here as well?

What if people who have bought wild collected orchids at least once figured this out? What if that's part of the reason why they don't care where the source is anymore? If people were not in any danger of persecution by their peers or their government, would there be more and more overwhelming evidence that this may be the mindset of these hobbyists? If so, how would this be addressed?

What if the other part of the reason is, these orchid hobbyists have also figured out that part of the problem is the regulations involved in the trade and collection of orchids?

What if the other part of the issue is these same hobbyists might have also started to figure out that in certain cases, and definitely not always, their local governments don't give a rat's about their own laws they set in place to supposedly protect their local population of orchids, and sometimes do nothing to enforce those laws? It's difficult to find evidence for the mindset of the hobbyists, but there is definitely little bits of evidence that local governments do neglect or bend their own laws at times that don't favor the orchids when in regards to protecting their native orchids.

What if I said that there is a small bit of real evidence that in certain cases, people have said to themselves, "I have a general idea of what the local laws are in regards to collecting orchids from the wild, but the laws are not protecting the orchids right now. Screw the laws, I'm going to save the orchids that are in danger of being destroyed by development or what-not, I'm collecting myself some wild orchids." Even this action carries with it the possibility of being punishable by law in certain cases or in certain countries if it was known by their respective governments.

While not all hobbyists think like this, are there really some that do?

Just offering up thoughts as to what to consider as truth, that's all. Not angry or anything, just wanted to bring up points of thought.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Just out of curiosity...

What are the laws here in the US about collecting, selling, and growing wild collected orchids that have come from people's private land?

[ronaldhanko]

If I understand things, a plant that is protected is protected on private as well as public land, though obviously it is harder to regulate on private land.

[cday2inflorida]

I have friends that have a few hundred acres up in the Florida panhandle. On these acres they own there is a bog with a very large colony of a couple of type of Sarracenia. They were told, woe to them... if they were caught trading in pitchers.

[Paul Mc]

Yeah, there was a chapter early on where they were discussing the Paph sandrianna (sp?) and they said that they were put on the endangered list and protected because no one took the time to find out where they existed in nature. Some scientists went out and found that they were doing just fine in nature and growing like crazy but they could not touch or remove them. This despite the fact that the land was to be bulldozed down in about a year to make room for a shopping center or something along those lines. They weren't even allowed to remove them from their current habitat and find a suitable place for them even say like a mile away.

Funny how ridiculous it seems, but I realize it happens at the same time.