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India bans plant collection

Ozzy

SirKristoff is a poopiehead
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http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=138901

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]f you are on a monsoon trail, don’t pluck plants
Forest Department bans any uprooting of rare speices in the forests surrounding Pune.
Express News Service

Pune, July 12: THE forest department plans to enforce a ban on the collection of rare and endangered plants in the forests of Pune and surrounding areas. Chief Conservator of Forest Prakash Thosare said the ban to be effected from August 1 to September 30, had been aimed at the mindless cutting and uprooting of these species under the garb of specimen collection.

‘‘This year, we propose the ban as a measure to spread awareness, especially because the Western Ghats are a biodiversity hotspot with many species endemic to the region,’’ he said. Plants like drosera, utriculerias, seropegia, orchids and others mentioned by the Red Data Book issued by the Botanical Survey of India have been included in the ban. The monsoon months have been selected because it is now that plants are known to sprout anew.

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The CCF plans to issue a circular to schools and colleges stating information about the ban in which he proposes to mention that the Range Forest Officer’s permission needs to be sought in case a specimen needs to be collected. Areas like Katraj Ghat and Sinhagad where many botanical excursions are undertaken will be specially patrolled during the ban period. Punitive action will be taken under the Indian Forest Act 1927, says Thosare.

M G poopole, head of the department of Botany, University of Pune supports such a move. ‘‘There is an unnecessary destruction of many rare species of plants because of indiscriminate collection by students of botany. Also rare plants like Mapia foetida, said to have anti-carcinogenic properties are being uprooted from the Sahyadri and taken away by unscrupulous agents for their processing.’’

P K Ghanekar, head of the department, Botany, Abasaheb Garware College, too has welcomed the ban. ‘‘In a convetion of botany teachers at the University level a couple of years ago, we had decided to encourage some practices. Teachers were to encourage the use of photographs instead of plant specimen in herbaria sheets, weed species were to be included in this selection, unnecessary cutting of plant species was to be discouraged,’’ he says.

Plant picks
Orchids
Drosera
Utreculiera
Seropegia
 
Well...I'm glad to see the action being taken but good luck in monitoring the poaching. I HOPE the ban is successful.
 
I've heard that 3rd world countries have little luck controlling poaching of plants or animals. The "natives" live in such poverty that even a few dollars a day for collecting their native plants helps the family budget immensely. Still, it doesn't help when collectors here are willing to purchase plants from nurseries without knowing where they really came from.

Perhaps what India should do is start some nurseries that propagate those plants for export purposes. Then people could be earning an income while protecting the plants at the same time.
 
It's not about the collectors or even about people who admire the plants...it's about biodiversity and the natural process by which decimated populations recover. This isn't a new scenario and it has been replayed countless times during and before our human history. Some might be inclined to "save the plants" for noble reasons, others are motivated simply by profit motives. My feelings are this ban should be honored, and none so much as by those who appreciate and love these species. If they must pass to extinction then this too is a natural process best left alone, hard as this might be. There might have been a time to make sensitive collections, and I hope they were in fact made. But that time has passed. At this stage I would encourage anyone with interest in these particular populations affected to create an embargo, EVEN if the plants were collected previously with permissions in place and subsequently reproduced in vitro. I feel anything less is only going to add value to that which should be devalued. If you love them, forget them.
 
I wonder if Pramod is aware of this. Um... where is he anyway?
confused.gif
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] ] There might have been a time to make sensitive collections, and I hope they were in fact made. But that time has passed.
I cannot agree more...
[b said:
Quote[/b] ] I would encourage anyone with interest in these particular populations affected to create an embargo, EVEN if the plants were collected previously with permissions in place and subsequently reproduced in vitro.
although I must disagree with this.
If the plants were, indeed, collected before now then the established genetic lines SHOULD be propogated. I realize that this might become blurry when faced with poaching, but if the alternative is extinction then.... Even if the original plants were not collected with the preservation of the genome in mind, why not utilize that frame of mind now with the legal specimens?
 
I can understand your disagreement, I have gone both ways about issues like this. My objection is that trade in endangered material only adds to the mystique and fuels demand for these plants, affording opportunity for profit making illegal transactions attractive to those individuals that may be of low ethical standards. Consider too, that people are hurting for money in those areas and desperate...if it came to a question of extinction of a plant species or extinction of a family member, which would you choose?

The turnaround in my feelings came not from the plant quarter, but rather from my interest in guitar. Flatpickers have long sought picks made from tortoise shell, which like ivory now is banned by C.I.T.E.S. There are some old picks occasionally to be had, and I sought hard for such at one time until someone pointed out that by promoting the mystique, it was ultimately endangering the tortoise. There is just no way of telling where and when the material came from, so I opted to adopt his stance and have now given up my desire for a tortoise shell pick. I did purchase a manmade cultured product that is pretty much identical, but it too is called "Tortise" but it too continues to promote the mystique which I realized after some reflection on the issue. I extend this analogy to cover endangered plants.

Plant material SHOULD be collected and maintained while populations are intact, NOT after the fact and examples like this devestation drive that point home. I do feel that trade in the material is far more iffy. I guess you have to play it from the heart, there are no black and white solutions.

There are so many of us, and so few of them. I will admit that "forgetting" is not going to happen across the board. Mystique once generated carries its own momentum. Just like littering in the wild when no one is looking, it's a personal choice: might not stop anything at all or have any reaching effect but makes one feel they at least are trying.
 
Very well stated William. Thank you for coming back to post your comments, all of which I agree with.
 
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