Est, get real...every plant you grow, somoen took out of the wild at some point.
There's no denying it, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. Times, however have changed. There's more and more oppotunity to go through proper channels, to take genetic samplings while making a minimal amount of damage to the population(s) involved. While I can't change the soure of the originals of plants in circulations we CAN change how new plant material comes in to circulation. There's ways that are ethical as well as ultimately beneficial to the population(s) involved. It doesn't need to be one way or the other.
The way people at TF view "conservation" is the biggest drawback to this forum. Case in point, you don't think I care about conservation because I'm not throwing a hissy fit like a little girl not getting her way any time anything happens in the wild.
Sexism always makes for a GREAT way to get your point across. Good on ya, mate.
By the way, awful argument, seeing as the majority of it consisted of quoting me and adding ", right?"
Hate to repond like this, but you leave me no choice:
Sarcasm.
The point is that your assertions when extrapolated to any sort of useful degree are in line with some pretty poor practices.
And btw, 2% germination rate in the wild is something the experts will agree upon.
Great! I'm glad there was something factual.
Look at things like talangensis...the destruction of that habitat was caused by lava, and due to people colelcting seed from talangensis, we now have enough plants in culture to not worry about inbreeding depression, etc. In the case of clipeata, it was suffering from overcollection of mature plants, not seeds, and the population was ultimately destroyed by fire.
This goes to show, there's ways to go about things that are correct, even if it sometimes goes against what a law says. If a species was threatened by lavaflow and people saved it despite laws not being elastic to effectively respond and change in time, then that's just peachy. Not legal, but I'd say ethically correct- anyone can feel free to disagree.
However, the thing is that these collections were not made to be genetical samplings to proliferated and protect the species, they were made for profit, pure and simple. These seeds aren't being sent to establishments that can and do have the facilities to maximize success and help to proliferate the species and help take away the market for poaching plant material, these seeds appear to rather do the exact oposite. If people scramble all over the seed offerings, do you think that a seller will really just keep on selling the occasional seed? Afraid not, by purchasing these seeds you support the growth of a market. May just be seeds today, but tomorrow it's ofshoots, then after that mature plants.
To sum up: There's channels today, there's ways that we can do things better. Sometimes they fail us, and in this case, there's an ethics call to be made. Circumventing channels or supporting the growth of a market which is disruptive to a plant community that you supposedly support the conservation of is contradictory at best.
Now, perhapse I was previously a bit more sarcastic than I strictly could have been, I think that most folks will see that there's a chord to be struck here, but I apologize if anyone was overly taken aback.