VFT Poachers Arrested

[swords]

Saw this in the headlines when I checked my email today:

http://centurylink.net/news/read.php?id=18796580&ps=1011&lang=en

 

[dionae]

They should just buy some seed and grow them or start tissue culturing them. Theyd have hundreds of VFTs in no time and could charge a lot more than 10 cent a piece.

 

[swords]

Totally why bother for only 10 - 25 cents each....

That makes the 200 plants they're caught with only worth $20-50 to the poachers - are they really that stupid to do all that work for so little payback or is the state totally out of touch with how much poachers are actually making?

 

[gill_za]

Totally why bother for only 10 - 25 cents each....

Average price in the average nursery for a young VFT is 5.99, and they are selling quick because it is very exotic: "Uhhhh mom look a moving plant, can I get it? Pleaaase? Pleaaaase?" so ... from 10cents to whatever they sell them for at the nursery... There is definitively profit.

My first VFT that I got from a nursery looked like it was poached. I did not know better.

 

[amphirion]

@swords: im betting they dont know how much they are being sold on the market. otherwise im sure they would have asked for more...

 

[Wire Man]

You think the punishment would be a bit heftier. Harvesting VFTs isn't exactly the easiest way to collect them. Pulling up 150 VFTs from pots filled with Sphagnum, orchids, Drosera, etc. was hard work this summer. It's easier to grow them from seed or pullings and collect them from trays in a greenhouse.

 

[mass]

Our local nursery sells tons of VFT's to teachers for school projects. I can imagine they'd buy a bunch from anyone for a buck or two a pop. Easily enough room to make profits.

 

[pills23]

A $25 punishment hardly seems like much incentive not to poach them. I can only hope that's $25 per plant, not per incident, but somehow I doubt it.

 

[Dexenthes]

Wow glad to see they were caught but still, I do not think the fine is anywhere near heavy enough. I feel that it should be somewhere in the ball park of > $1000. 20 or 30 bucks is not enough to dissuade poachers.

Also ten cents a piece... wow.

Seriously if times are that hard just invest twenty bucks on ebay and get three or four plants and start breeding...

 

[Sig]

The prices are everything, save the mention of the internet, seems like this article was made 30 years ago...

 

[Wire Man]

The Nature Conservancy of North Carolina just made a facebook post about the incident today, so it's recent.

 

[lance]

Good...Im surprised they weren't going after S. Oreophila...VFT's are very easy to find on the web and easy to mass produce from seed!

 

[swords]

I can't find it online right off but I have heard that it's $1000 PER PLANT fine if you are caught poaching Cypripedium reginae (showy lady slipper orchid) here in MN because it's the official state flower.

I remember watching the 5 o'clock news with my dad a few years ago and some guy was bragging about how he and his wife "visit the Boundary Waters Canoe Area every year and bring some plants home to remember our trip by" then they showed his back yard with dozens of Cypripedium reginae plants...
The channel replays the local news an hour later and that clip had been edited out along with the statement of bringing home plants. LOL