Re: Some crazy-huge rafflesianas...
 

I agree that poaching is illegal but sometime we have to look at it from a different perspective and take into considerations the local cultural and customary practices. If the poaching is done by you and me then it's definitely illegal regardless of our intention whether to propagate or to profit from them. But if a native is to take them from the wild for whatever reasons it's perfectly legal as they hold customary right over the land and it's fauna/flora. What we see in the pictures are probably taken from a native market where jungle produces are sold and traded as it has been done for over hundreds of year. These peoples actually understand the value of conservations and will never deplete the jungle as their wellbeing and livelihood depend on them. There's no harm buying from them as from some of the big nursery eventhough some of their breeding stock are sourced from the wild in the name of conservation(profit)*biggrin2*.
By the way the pitchers are so HUGE...:wub:

Re: Some crazy-huge rafflesianas...
 

In my opinion its does not really make a difference whether who is doing it legally or illegally, that is more like gaining a "reason" or excuse to assure oneself that is it "actually OK" to remove the plant from wild.

Even if it is just one plant being poached/sampled/or whatever word is used...it actually means one less plant in the wild to reproduce seedlings. And also I believe its not just one or two being removed but possibly a significant number is poached from the known location each time. This would basically deal a heavy blow to the nep's survival in the area.

Whether an expert grower or novice buys the wild plant, it means survival/death to that single plant. However the bigger picture is demand = supply required = more plants to be removed for more profit. I don't really see how this help the wild neps' population.

The biggest threat to neps is still destruction of rain-forest by man for land use.

Re: Some crazy-huge rafflesianas...
 

In the history of man, selfish collectors, greedy businessmen and corrupt government officers are always the force behind extinction of rare / protected plants in their natural habitat, including those in protected areas. One good example is the recent case of Lizard King Anson Wong. This bastard never learn the lesson even after he was caught so many times

Re: Some crazy-huge rafflesianas...
 

Well, it depends. There are 2 schools of thought. The 'saving of wild plants' is one way to look at it. If the habitat is already under threat because of other activities (logging, construction etc), then would you rather those plants left to die there? Or 'harvested' (saved) and sold with perhaps a better chance of them surviving in captivity, and possibly be propagated (under the right hands)...? This has happened with many rare orchids. Slipper orchids (Paphiopedilum sp) used to be one of the rarest genera of orchids on the planet, as some species are restricted to a very small locality. However, collection from the wild (where else could you get parent material to work with), selection and modern propagation has yielded large quantities of easier-to-cultivate plants. Same with many of the nepenthes, namely rajah and clipeata. To effectively reduce the pressure on 'demand', you have to bring in more supply from these artificially-propagated sources.

Re: Some crazy-huge rafflesianas...
 

I am NOT condoning what Anson Wong did. His motive was for profit. What I am referring to is for the purpose of 'conservation through cultivation'....

Re: Some crazy-huge rafflesianas...
 

Well, it's good that at least people are discussing this :)
Please don't get confused about a few things:

-in SE Asian countries, local poaching is legal, no problem, we are talking about the MORAL problem of destroying a whole species in the wild. And believe me, local people (when they are not nepenthes lovers, growers specialists etc) don't care about that, they don't even realize that. They will collect Nepenthes until there are nepenthes, when they finish, they will collect something else, they don't really care about conservation.

-professional nurseries have plants obtained from seeds (which is morally fine, if well done) or cuttings (which is morally fine, if well done), not whole plants, so please don't compare the two. Poachers dig out plants and sell those directly, it's completely different. If you wanna be sure your plants come from a morally safe origin, always buy from well known professional sellers. Avoid unknown ebay sellers from SE Asia selling adult specimens, they are often poached. And of course avoid buying plants at local markets if they are not sold by professional, local nepenthes growers.

-finally, don't take the "oh, well, it's better in my hands than in the poacher's hands" and "ho, well, I will help the species introducing this plant in cultivation" as an excuse to allow and ignore poaching. Nepenthes lovers should not buy poached plants unless they are the only source for that particular species, it's going extinct and you really need to preserve any plant you find, no matter if it's poached (clipeata and others are a good example). If the species is not in danger, you should collect seeds and cuttings yourself, or buy them. Select the best plants and introduce those in cultivation.

P.S. Pahio, I know you didn't post those photos to excuse poaching but just to show the plants, but this is a good occasion to make people aware once again about the problem :)

Re: Some crazy-huge rafflesianas...
 

Great to bring up the controversial issues for a nice debate again:smile: , it has been a long while since the last occured...

First of all, you got to know that, similar to any part of the world...poaching is illegal, just that there are no strict enforcement on the law in most of the South East Asia countries, speaking of real good system to run the country around this region, Singapore is the only one that can comes in mind...legal poaching is allowed in Malaysia for those aboriginal people only, each clan has their own territory, while their welfare is not properly taken care of, they rely on jungle resources to survive, and most of the time, you will be shock by their extremely low pricing(they are mainly into feeding themselves instead of making huge profit out of those resources), demand and supply apply here, which also leads to their seasonal hunting, it's not just nepenthes, many other resources ranging from petai(local bean for easting purposes), bugs, reptiles for exotic pets and many others, but there are only specific time for each, rainy season will keep them out of the jungle for most cases in Malaysia...

Well if you say that we only buy from professional here, that could be a case of oligopoly market or even monopoly market where prices will just kick hobbyists out of the game, and will eventually lead to poaching as neps can be bought at much lower price, in the case of Malaysia, I've been around some nurseries here and there, I've tried to get the best possible terms that can let them understand what I want from fellow forumers/hobbyists...but the result is rather disappointing, most of them are into selling rather than knowing what they are dealing with, for example, I've tried asking for sphagnum moss from around 15 different nursery around, non of them know what is that even if I tell them in the common trades term...if we were to rely on "professional nursery", how much premium price do we need to pay just for their knowledge, it's not the condition of competition, but most of our nursery here are still being very far away from "knowledgable"...

If the species is not in danger, you should collect seeds and cuttings yourself, or buy them. Select the best plants and introduce those in cultivation.
There are no best plant around, every one has different taste, especially when one "best" plant is taken and clone, if a variant of a nep is common out there, it won't be the best any more...

I agree that nep lover should not encourage poaching or wild collected nep by uprooting the whole plant, but a lot needs to be done to let this happens, the condition here is that jungles being illegally cleared off for plantation purposes, mainly oil palm(large range of products contain it, if you want to support anti poaching, might as well boycott every palm oil related product like soap, chocolate and so on...demand & supply as you know...)

protection needs a rather complete system where by you need the world to know what is going on here, illegal things being done to satisfy needs and wants of the whole world, hobbyist needs to refrain from getting wild plants, gov needs to make sure laws and regulations being carried out properly and so on...but under todays world where money rules(Still stuck with the retarded GDP ages...), it is almost impossible...

Re: Some crazy-huge rafflesianas...
 

BTW, hobbyist should not even exist if we were to protect those plants as do those cooperate that are into cloning plants(look at the pricing, you think that's for conservation? Profit maybe...with the quantities being supplied around...don't forget nep dun grow out of your table or toilet bowl out of a sudden, their original sources still comes from wild...)

Re: Some crazy-huge rafflesianas...
 

I agree with Marc and Sooxiwei to a certain extent that getting seeds/cuttings sensibly is the lesser evil of poaching and might help to reduce wild matured plants from being uprooted for sale.

It is really really sad when I see L, XL & XXL sized N. naga being offered on certain website for months. That means lots of mature plants have been removed and that species could be extinct now or really soon! Something should be done about it by legal authorities and I hope real nep enthusiast who care please don't buy these plants.

Re: Some crazy-huge rafflesianas...
 

collect and release is another problem this prob is most common up north, from Thailand onwards...you might be offered something called N. Naga, but is it true N. Naga or a hybrid of it...that's a huge trouble there, same applies to many other flora and fauna there...