Now, the problem with people buying endangered plants can be attacked from different angles.
The first question I have is: If there a market for an endangered plant, why doesn’t it get grown in a greenhouse or on farmland?
Is the plant is really endangered and there are few of them gathering them up shouldn’t be cheap. Why can’t a farmer who focuses on growing them compete?
Explaining that this wasn’t what we had planned, or that the flowers were already cut and dead, or that this was one party out of likely ten from that train alone fell on deaf ears
The thing that matters isn’t what you planned but what the law of the land happens to be.
Now imagine that the lawyer’s interested in wild nature protection. What would he rationally do?
Lawyers are experts in suing people. Here people seem to violate laws. A lawyer might go and file a lawsuit or if that isn’t possible report specific incidents to the police.
(I will add info about the law later—don’t have it on hand right now.)
The early spring plants, such as snowdrops, are not very rare in the regions where they grow, it’s just that 1) they begin to bloom earlier in Southern regions (the Crimea, Caucasus) and there is an established line of distribution to many towns by railway and buses. It is, in essence, organized crime. Snowdrops aren’t the only such product coming from the Crimea (Ruscus and Juniperus are, too, and probably other things we didn’t work with), so I imagine the people who do thiscan obtain profit without farming. Another evidence of this is the occasional plant with bulb present—were they farmed, the bulb would have been left in soil. (Cyclamens are used in folk medicine, so they are often taken with bulbs; but the bulbs, unlike the flowers, are mostly sold locally, and we would not be aware of it if we didn’t come there during the season. This is, however, unlikely for snowdrops, which are poisonous.) 2) when other populations (in ‘continental’ Ukraine) begin to bloom, there are several other species—Scilla sibirica and bifolia, tulips, narcisses, later lily-of-the-valley, irises etc., and so the gatherers can pick a lot without farming.
Also, apparently flowers ‘from the wild’ have additional charm.
Also, farming Red Data species is illegal (but bulk sellers still provide ‘licenses’ from their village councils now and again.)
Also, there are places in the Carpathians where if you fence off a part of the meadow it’s considered yours, so you can gather what you want there.
Also, by the law we cannot do much beyond spread bad publicity without police. The police are in on it, since most of the trade goes on in public places like markets and near underground stations (in Kyiv and other larger cities), so they are lukewarm in general and tend to find excuses not to get involved. When we do file a lawsuit, the seller is still unlikely to be fined. The whole businesd is rather amusing cat-and-mouth if you don’t get involved, with many mice and few cats, and the occasional wiping of face against the wall.
Very uneven distribution, and/or gradual decline in population, and/or destruction of habitats, and/or (for things like clubmosses, which go to funereal wreaths, secondary stuffing in bouquets and Easter decorations) largely unknown distribution and very slow recruitment of new plants.
In general your presentation doesn’t give me the impression that this is a very important issue, especially given what currently happens in the Ukraine.
I don’t know to what extent that’s due to your presentation of the issue or inherent to the issue.
If you want to achieve something on the issue it might be necessary to spent energy on developing talking points that illustrate that it’s an important issue.
Notice I never said it is. (And please stop adding ‘the’, it is seen by Ukrainians as ‘they are still referring to us as ‘the Edge’ after all these years’.) My goal was not to present the issue competitively, but to show a situation where donating money leads to, say, climate change activism (which I think is less efficient) and donating manpower—to a regular, structured, and much more integrated into existing legal infrastructure campaign.
Given the current situation, donating money [to war-related issues] is very efficient iff you know it is not a scam. But there is a vast need for specialized volunteering, too (housing people, rehabilitating invalids, journalism, etc.)
It is worth noting that in the case of the Snowdrop, the classification of species and subspecies is messy. A lot of the preservation is trying to preserve natural variations in their natural habitat. If all we cared about was Galanthus nivalis paralectotype we could ignore localized subspecies—in fact, if all we cared about was Galanthus nivalis the pretty white flower, we would just be happy to let it go extinct in the wild—we have plenty in gardens across Europe.
The reason why people take them from the fields when it is so easy to grow them in your back garden is simply that if you take flowers from a mountain field they are free. If you live near a field, don’t expect to get caught, and have not particular feelings on the tragedy of the commons, why wouldn’t you pick them and sell them?
Were I a part of the system, yes, I would. But I am not, and there were cases (I remember two) when the protected species was declared extinct from a reserve, and the habitat irreversibly changed (into a wood logging site and into a building site, respectively). Without the species (Galanthus sp. in the one case, 3 orchids + 2 willows in the other) the ecosystem is still valuable, but much harder to defend.
So… A species becomes popular—is recognized as becoming rarer—is protected by law (since the Red Data Book has more to do wth law than with science) - is gradually exterminated or left only in unconnected populations—is proclaimed a conservation target—and then winks out, one population at a time, and the places where they used to be are seen as ‘lost’ and so much less valuable, conservation-wise.
The first question I have is: If there a market for an endangered plant, why doesn’t it get grown in a greenhouse or on farmland? Is the plant is really endangered and there are few of them gathering them up shouldn’t be cheap. Why can’t a farmer who focuses on growing them compete?
The thing that matters isn’t what you planned but what the law of the land happens to be.
Lawyers are experts in suing people. Here people seem to violate laws. A lawyer might go and file a lawsuit or if that isn’t possible report specific incidents to the police.
(I will add info about the law later—don’t have it on hand right now.)
The early spring plants, such as snowdrops, are not very rare in the regions where they grow, it’s just that 1) they begin to bloom earlier in Southern regions (the Crimea, Caucasus) and there is an established line of distribution to many towns by railway and buses. It is, in essence, organized crime. Snowdrops aren’t the only such product coming from the Crimea (Ruscus and Juniperus are, too, and probably other things we didn’t work with), so I imagine the people who do thiscan obtain profit without farming. Another evidence of this is the occasional plant with bulb present—were they farmed, the bulb would have been left in soil. (Cyclamens are used in folk medicine, so they are often taken with bulbs; but the bulbs, unlike the flowers, are mostly sold locally, and we would not be aware of it if we didn’t come there during the season. This is, however, unlikely for snowdrops, which are poisonous.) 2) when other populations (in ‘continental’ Ukraine) begin to bloom, there are several other species—Scilla sibirica and bifolia, tulips, narcisses, later lily-of-the-valley, irises etc., and so the gatherers can pick a lot without farming.
Also, apparently flowers ‘from the wild’ have additional charm.
Also, farming Red Data species is illegal (but bulk sellers still provide ‘licenses’ from their village councils now and again.)
Also, there are places in the Carpathians where if you fence off a part of the meadow it’s considered yours, so you can gather what you want there.
Also, by the law we cannot do much beyond spread bad publicity without police. The police are in on it, since most of the trade goes on in public places like markets and near underground stations (in Kyiv and other larger cities), so they are lukewarm in general and tend to find excuses not to get involved. When we do file a lawsuit, the seller is still unlikely to be fined. The whole businesd is rather amusing cat-and-mouth if you don’t get involved, with many mice and few cats, and the occasional wiping of face against the wall.
Then why are they an endangered plant?
Very uneven distribution, and/or gradual decline in population, and/or destruction of habitats, and/or (for things like clubmosses, which go to funereal wreaths, secondary stuffing in bouquets and Easter decorations) largely unknown distribution and very slow recruitment of new plants.
In general your presentation doesn’t give me the impression that this is a very important issue, especially given what currently happens in the Ukraine.
I don’t know to what extent that’s due to your presentation of the issue or inherent to the issue. If you want to achieve something on the issue it might be necessary to spent energy on developing talking points that illustrate that it’s an important issue.
Notice I never said it is. (And please stop adding ‘the’, it is seen by Ukrainians as ‘they are still referring to us as ‘the Edge’ after all these years’.) My goal was not to present the issue competitively, but to show a situation where donating money leads to, say, climate change activism (which I think is less efficient) and donating manpower—to a regular, structured, and much more integrated into existing legal infrastructure campaign.
Given the current situation, donating money [to war-related issues] is very efficient iff you know it is not a scam. But there is a vast need for specialized volunteering, too (housing people, rehabilitating invalids, journalism, etc.)
It is worth noting that in the case of the Snowdrop, the classification of species and subspecies is messy. A lot of the preservation is trying to preserve natural variations in their natural habitat. If all we cared about was Galanthus nivalis paralectotype we could ignore localized subspecies—in fact, if all we cared about was Galanthus nivalis the pretty white flower, we would just be happy to let it go extinct in the wild—we have plenty in gardens across Europe.
The reason why people take them from the fields when it is so easy to grow them in your back garden is simply that if you take flowers from a mountain field they are free. If you live near a field, don’t expect to get caught, and have not particular feelings on the tragedy of the commons, why wouldn’t you pick them and sell them?
Were I a part of the system, yes, I would. But I am not, and there were cases (I remember two) when the protected species was declared extinct from a reserve, and the habitat irreversibly changed (into a wood logging site and into a building site, respectively). Without the species (Galanthus sp. in the one case, 3 orchids + 2 willows in the other) the ecosystem is still valuable, but much harder to defend.
So… A species becomes popular—is recognized as becoming rarer—is protected by law (since the Red Data Book has more to do wth law than with science) - is gradually exterminated or left only in unconnected populations—is proclaimed a conservation target—and then winks out, one population at a time, and the places where they used to be are seen as ‘lost’ and so much less valuable, conservation-wise.