Hi Lee: The US Fish and Wildlife Service has a number of institutions that have agreed to accept illegially imported plants. Typically they are botanic gardens, zoos, universities, etc. with strong conservation programs or well run facilities. We, Chicago Botanic Garden, are one of over 50 institutions in this program. It works like this, we get a call from an officer at Fish and Wildlife on a rotational basis. If the plants are of interest or further or collection goals we accept them. The conditions are that they have to be held within the institution (not sold or distributed) and that we will submit reports on a periodic basis documenting their status (alive, dead, thriving, etc.). If we don't want some of the seized plants, the Fish and Wildlife officer continues to call other centers until they all have a happy home. As you can imagine, some of these plants were not handled in the best manner prior to being seized or do not respond well to treatments at USDA to insure no pests have also been imported. Everybody involved does the best they can but loses occur. We don't advertise what we have a particular set of resuced plants for several reasons. Security of the collections is paramount (we don't want an irrate importer repossessing them during a 'midnight unauthorized' collection event. The countries of origin also have the legal right to ask that they be repatriated - sometimes these requests are not received until after the plants have been sent to us. Most arrive with very little documentation - usually just a genus or family and country of origin. Most plants appear to have been brought into the US by folks who didn't know it is illegal; every once in a while we get offered large shipments of very well documented plants of choice genera that tend to suggest a knowledgeable plantsperson was responsible (who should also know the rules). Hope this helps clarify the process. Boyce Tankersley Manager of Living Plant Documentation Chicago Botanic Garden 1000 Lake Cook Road Glencoe, IL 60022 tel 847-835-6841 fax 847-835-1635 -----Original Message----- From: pbs-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:pbs-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Lee Poulsen Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 4:23 PM To: Pacific Bulb Society Subject: Re: [pbs] Seed and Bulb Exchanges, some Comments This very last point has been bothering me ever since the last time I brought some plants back with me from abroad (with permits and phytos and everything), and while the LAX Customs agent was taking them away from me to be inspected (and picked up the next day), I asked him what they did with plants that people brought back with them without all the permits. He said they would either destroy them or turn them over to a place designated to receive illegally imported plant material. I somewhat shockedly asked if they destroyed endangered or nearly extinct plants just because they were brought in illegally. He tried to assure me that no, they would turn those over to the proper people. When I further inquired who that might be and what they did with the plants (like rare orchids for example), he said that usually they gave those plants to the L.A. Zoo and the Zoo planted them in their gardens throughout the zoo. Now I'm curious just why the L.A. Zoo would be better prepared and knowledgeable enough to grow any random rare plant that shows up, than anyone else including specialist hobbyists would be? And if all these confiscated plants are planted somewhere, even if they were turned over to better qualified places such as the Huntington or the San Diego Zoo for that matter, where are they and how can we find out what they are and where they're planted in order to see them? And in the case of rare orchids for example, who gets them? If someone tried to illegally bring a Worsleya back from Brazil with them and it got confiscated, who would end up with it and what would they do with it? It's not like any professional plant person or botanist here in California is really going to know how to grow it better than the top experts (but still merely hobbyists) on the Worsleya email list who have actually successfully grown them. In fact, I would bet there isn't any professional botanist or other official botanical professional here in California who knows better how to grow them than the best hobbyist growers in Australia do. I think the botanical officials here would stand a good chance of killing it. Anyway, since I've never seen anything particularly rare or really unusual that is CITES listed that no one else has at either the L.A. Zoo or at the Huntington or the L.A. Arboretum, they're either permanently keeping them out of sight so that only the professionals who work there, and their friends, ever get to see them, or they're losing them just as much as we mere hobbyist would if we tried to grow them on. Furthermore, now that the plant is here anyway, why don't they propagate it in some way, by cloning or seeds or division, and get it out there so that bad people don't keep trying to smuggle them in and decimate the native populations? Just wondering. End of gripe session. ;-) --Lee Poulsen Pasadena, California, USDA Zone 10a _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php