CASE NUMBER: 199
CASE MNEMONIC: Orchid
CASE NAME: Orchid Smuggling and Conservation A.
I. IdentificationThe size of an orchid plant can range from microscopic to several feet tall. The bloom of an orchid can range from very tiny to larger than a human hand. The flower petals are arranged in an elaborate composition, and the blooms come in a great variety of colors. Orchids can grow in just about any climate and in just about any type of physical geography, such as tree branches, rocks, or the ground. However, the majority of orchids grow in warm climates. In the United States, orchids are most likely to be found in Hawaii and Florida. Most internationally traded orchids come from the tropical nations of Asia or South America, such as India, Thailand, China, Singapore, Madagascar, Brazil, and Guatemala. Orchids also vary dramatically in the amount of time needed to bloom. Some orchids take up to 10 years to bloom, while hybrids from the Dendrobium genus usually bloom within one year.
European aristocrats began collecting orchids in the 1800s, when they learned to grow them in terrariums. Soon, European aristocrats, especially the British, were going on safaris to South America and Asia to acquire new types of the plant. Of course, there were no laws or regulations concerning orchids. The collection mentality inspired by orchids sometimes referred to as "orchidelirium" could be seen early on. Some of these Europeans "were known to find a new orchid in a valley, pick every one in sight, and then burn the land so as to corner the market in the species" (Doyle, p. 6).
It was not until the environmental movement of the 1960s that regulations were enacted to protect wild orchids and their habitats. Third World nations realized that their environmental heritage was being stolen from them by rich Westerners. Today, orchids are protected by national laws and international treaties. Primary protection comes from the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) treaty, signed by over 120 nations. This treaty stipulates that any species of plant or animal that is endangered cannot be commercially traded (see THAIBIRD case). Rare species that are not yet endangered may be removed from the wild and commercially traded, but those who do so must adhere to strict regulations designed to ensure that no more orchid species become endangered or extinct. In the United States, additional protection comes from the Endangered Species Act, which forbids all commercial trade in certain varieties of orchids which are endangered.
It is perfectly legal to trade in nursery-produced orchids. Orchid growers use seeds or tips of leaves to grow orchid hybrids in their nurseries. Creating the plants in nurseries is known as artificial propagation, and this of course requires modern technology that was not available to the first orchid growers. Modern greenhouses are capable of imitating the temperature, moisture, and wind conditions that orchids thrive upon in the wild. Nursery owners often outdo nature by producing plants superior to those found in the wild healthier and with flowers that are larger and have more interesting colors.
For two reasons, orchid smuggling continues unabated. First of all, nursery-raised orchids are expensive. This is because it is time- consuming to raise orchids and the technology is not cheap. It is often cheaper, easier, and quicker to obtain orchids illegally from the wild. Because it is so much easier to collect orchids in the wild, smugglers often can undercut the prices of legitimate growers. Secondly, orchid collectors often find nursery-grown orchids to lack the exotic aura and mystery of wild orchids.
Because collectors and growers prize unique orchids so much, smuggling of protected orchids from the wild has increased. This threatens many species of orchid, namely the exotic ones, although no one knows exactly how many species of orchids are threatened by smuggling or how quickly these species are becoming endangered. The Lady's Slipper is the most commonly smuggled genus of orchid. Some collectors will travel to tropical countries on their own in search of rare and unique specimens to steal. Others utilize the services of professional orchid smugglers. Most wild orchids sell for about $25 per plant, but rarer species have been know to go for as much as $2,000. It is easy to "launder" most of the flowers so that they may be openly displayed, shown in competitions, bred, or traded.
Orchid smuggling is one part of the epidemic of plant and wildlife smuggling, with an illegal commercial trade totaling $5 billion in 1994 (Schevitz, p. C2). Besides orchids, other plants that are illegally traded include threatened or endangered cacti and carnivorous plants. (see PLANT case). In the past, authorities in the West have usually turned a blind eye to plant smuggling because they had more serious issues to deal with. However, this is changing, since plant smuggling is becoming more lucrative and occurring on a larger scale.
The techniques of orchid smugglers are similar to those who smuggle other rare plants or animal parts. The orchids can be hidden in suitcases and car trunks or in secret compartments of shipping boxes. Often smugglers will simply misdeclare a species on the import and export permits, which is easy to do because identifying endangered species is difficult for non-experts, and it is difficult to spot a rare species when it is not in bloom. Also, bribes have been know to make the process easier. Belize and Taiwan, which are not signatories to CITES, are big markets for smuggled orchids.
For the first time ever, the United States has charged an orchid smuggler with a felony and prosecuted him. An Indonesian man named Harto Kolopaking was charged with bringing approximately 1,500 tropical Lady's Slipper orchids from Indonesia into the US at San Jose over a two-year period, in violation of the Endangered Species Act. He pled guilty in November 1994, and on April 14, 1995, Kolopaking was sentenced by a federal judge to five months in prison. Kolopaking's father once discovered a new species of orchid, Paphiopedilum kolopakingii, which was named after him.
Kolopaking had been using a family member in San Jose to link his rare orchids from the family nursery in Java with an orchid wholesaler in the California. The first evidence against him obtained by the U.S. was in 1993 when he tried to send 60 boxes of rare orchids into the U.S. The US government later put together a sting operation to lure Kolopaking from Java to the US. In September 1994, Kolopaking was arrested in California after he sold 216 smuggled orchids worth $150,000 to an undercover federal agent posing as an orchid collector.
There have been important arrests in Great Britain and Brazil as well. In February 1994 there were some arrests that took orchid growers by surprise. It occurred at the annual Japan Grand Prix International in Tokyo, the biggest event in the orchid community, attended by over 400,000 orchid lovers who display and show their orchids. At the show, someone was arrested for selling a rare type of orchid that was once believed to be extinct. This was a type of lady slipper from northern Vietnam which was first discovered in the early 1900s. At least two specimens of the plant were legally shipped out of the country at that time. One of these plants was used to produces thousands more, keeping the species alive when it was believed to have gone extinct in the wild. But in the past few years, it was discovered that the species was still growing wild in some areas. Although it would have been legal to remove a few specimens to provide some genetic variation to the nursery-grown species, smugglers instead moved in to make off with nearly every orchid. Some of the smuggled flowers ended up at the Tokyo show, where authorities became aware of them. The seller was arrested and two important Japanese orchid officials were forced to resign from their jobs.
Another case of orchid smuggling involves a Hong Kong man named Tuc Truong, who was charged with two felony and three misdemeanor charges by the US federal government after he attempted to smuggle chemicals, drugs, and endangered plants into the US from Hong Kong. Among the smuggled articles was 280 pounds a species of orchid protected under CITES and the Endangered Species Act (see FLOWER case). The orchid smuggling accounted for one of the misdemeanor charges Truong faces, and it is a regulatory misdemeanor, which means that the government does not have to prove that the defendant was aware of the regulations surrounding the items being brought into the country, but only that the defendant knew what he was importing.
Although smugglers serve only a small number of orchid collectors, they do great environmental damage. For example, as China has opened itself up more to Westerners, it has become popular with smugglers, since it contains many species never before seen in the West. The Chinese environment is being ravaged by smugglers, aided by the desperately poor peasantry, who assist the smugglers in their work for a meager amount of money.
The big debate is whether smuggling hastens the extinction of wild orchids or whether it helps to preserve them. The head of the Commercial Orchids Guild, Jerry Fisher, acknowledges that he knows there is a lot of orchid smuggling going on, but he defends orchid collectors with most of the time being very concerned about the preservation of the various species, and he credits them with increasing knowledge about the plants. Most orchid collectors believe that the biggest threat to orchids is loss of habitat, specifically rain forests. Most orchids live in rain forests, and as we are all aware, millions of acres of rain forest are cut or burned down every year for mining, timber, farming and development. Today, many orchids that are extinct in the wild due to habitat destruction continue to grow in greenhouses. However, often when collectors believe that an orchid's habitat is on the verge of being completely destroyed, they will rush out to harvest the last orchids from the area, leaving nothing behind, guaranteeing that that particular species goes extinct in the wild.
Most orchid growers are surprisingly tolerant of such orchid poaching and reserve most of their wrath for trade restrictions. In their mind, it is trade restrictions which endanger orchids and smugglers who preserve the various species for humanity to enjoy forever. Since natural habitats are being destroyed so rapidly anyway, they believe that it is better for a smuggler to go into the jungle and remove every single plant he can get his hands on. Orchid growers want to collect more endangered species from the wild to preserve them. Environmentalists, of course, choose to focus on preserving entire ecosystems rather than a single species. They claim that collectors are motivated by greed more than anything because there are many otherwise pristine jungles that have had every orchid removed from them, making many species of orchid extinct in the wild. There is a big difference between removing a few specimens from the wild to ensure that a species never goes extinct and removing every last orchid from an ecosystem that may yet be saved. It is impossible to tell who is right because no one can really predict what the future holds for various ecosystems.
Orchid collectors usually believe that CITES goes too far and is too strict in its plant regulations. They have two main problems with CITES. First of all, CITES highly regulates the gathering of orchids from the wild, but according to orchid growers, these regulations actually contribute more to the extinction of wild rare orchids than to their preservation, because under CITES it is either illegal or extremely difficult to remove endangered or rare orchid species from habitats that are being destroyed anyway. CITES does allow some orchids to be removed from the wild if the proper authorities decide that the species will not be harmed. However, this is difficult to do because there is a lot of paperwork to be filled out, which can take months to process. Also, there is no guarantee that authorization will be given. The orchid growers contend that unless CITES makes some concessions to the demand for these rare orchids, smuggling will continue and more species will become extinct.
If CITES was amended to allow for easier access to a limited number of rare or endangered specimens to be used in artificial propagation, there would be less smuggling and a greater chance that a species could be preserved in the wild. Orchid growers believe that overregulation of orchid trade is what has driven the price of orchids up, which in turn leads to smuggling. Most species of orchids can be bred from seed to produce thousands more plants, or else they can be cloned to produce the same amount. Cloning is a relatively new technique in the orchid world and it means that exact replicas of wild orchids can be produced in nurseries. It is because of the ease of cloning that most orchid growers believe that plants and animals should be treated separately under CITES.
Secondly, orchid collectors also contend that some of the orchids protected under CITES are not exactly rare. Some growers want more research into which species are truly threatened and which should no longer be in CITES.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that only 10 percent of orchid collectors obtain orchids from the wild. Some orchid growers are quite defensive, saying that the vast majority of law- abiding orchid growers must put up with extremely cumbersome regulations because of the actions of the few. Many acknowledge that the orchid world needs to put more emphasis on conservation and to educate collectors about threatened and endangered species. Such work can be accomplished through such organizations as the American Orchid Society, which has created a conservation committee.
Although many orchid growers want easier access to rare wild orchids, most countries are tightening their restrictions on orchid exports. It is impossible to legally import from countries such as Borneo, New Guinea, and Costa Rica.
The orchid growers make some legitimate complaints about CITES. Since a single specimen can be cloned into thousands of specimens, it is probably acceptable to allow a very small number of endangered orchids to be used in this manner. It will at least ensure that the species survives. However, deciding who to allow to clone a plant that will be in high demand would be a tricky question. If every rare plant could be made widely available on the open market, smuggling would decline because it is in part dependent on providing access to rare and unique specimens. However, it would not completely disappear, because no nursery can completely replicate all of the genetic diversity and mutations found in nature. Poachers would no doubt continue to seek out new species from remote areas to satisfy the needs of compulsive collectors. Completely denying access to something people strongly desire rarely works, yet creating easier access will not necessarily eliminate the problem. Additionally, revising CITES will do nothing to bring down the price of nursery-produced orchids, which is one reason smuggling is so prevalent.
At the same time, it is unconscionable what many orchid collectors are doing in the name of species preservation. In my opinion, it is much more important to preserve orchids in the wild than in privately owned greenhouses or in public botanical gardens. Many orchid collectors are so obsessed with their hobby that they can't see the forest for the trees: they will destroy the balance of tropical ecosystems to preserve one species, and they care more about private ownership of a certain plant than about protecting nature in the public domain. They should turn their energies to fighting habitat destruction rather assuming that it is a given. Fortunately, many Third World countries are already striving to preserve their environmental heritage. Yet orchid smuggling will continue so long as the orchid community continues to tolerate it.
II. Legal Clusters III. Geographic Clustersa. Geographic Domain: Global
b. Geographic Site: Global
c. Geographic Impact: Global
IV. Trade Clustersa. Directly Related to Product: Orchid
b. Indirectly Related to Product:
c. Not Related to Product:
d. Related to Process: Species Loss Land
V. Environment Clusters VI. Other FactorsImport of Chemical, Species, Plants Cited." 19 September 1995. Dinkelspeil, Frances. "Plant Smugglers Might Go to Prison; U.S. Crackdown Nets Guilty Pleas." The Times-Picayune. 7 May 1995, p. A2.
Doyle, Jim. "Black Market Orchids: A global underground smuggling network may drive some rare species into extinction." The San Francisco Chronicle. 8 January 1995, p. 6.
Ferrell, David. "Fancying Forbidden Flowers." The Los Angeles Times. 5 March 1995, p. A1.
Handly, Paul. "In the Pink: Thailand's Orchid Exports Blossom." Far Eastern Economic Review. 27 February 1992, p. 58-59.
The San Francisco Chronicle. "5-Month Prison Term for Orchid Smuggler." 15 April 1995, p. A14.
Schevitz, Tanya. "Flesh-eating plants so beguiling they lure 3 men to commit crime; Members in Bay group plead guilty to smuggling rare plants into U.S." The San Francisco Examiner. 16 April 1995, p. C2.
Spald, Elisabeth Levitan. "How Wild Orchids Fare in the U.S. and Canada." The Christian Science Monitor. 6 August 1992, p. 12. The Washington Times. "L.A. orchid smuggler gets five-month term." 16 April 1995, p. A2.