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The Trap

Here's the subheading of an interesting article from the Oxford American, which I think people will be able to open (I subscribe):

The Venus flytrap grows only in the swamps around Wilmington, North Carolina. Are laws against poaching it too harsh?

The full article is at: https://www.oxfordamerican.org/item/2002-the-trap

Here's some more:

Growing up, Max played in the woods. He went out with family, learned how to avoid snakes and how to get home safe. He turns to the wilderness to find relaxation. Outdoorsmanship and self-reliance are traditional American values, but some are punished for exercising them. In North Carolina, not everyone is allowed to live off the land.

For Max, there is an easy solution: let people pick traps off of land before it gets developed, which would at least eliminate redundant destruction. But no one is listening to poachers.

I'm rarely on Terraforums anymore and don't know what the sentiment tends to be regarding the impacts of plant poachers on CPs vs the impacts of habitat destruction, but the writer sees poachers being the smaller problem.
 
Neither is a smaller problem than the other. Considering there have been many species that have been just about wiped out in the wild due to poaching, it's no less major an issue than extinction via habitat loss.
 
It's true that land use is a pressing issue but removing protections from poaching is not the way to go. We've seen it with dozens of different species dozens of times before. People will collect every last specimen of something they can find in the name of making a dollar.
 
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