Paph rungsuriyanum avail online

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However, if country A issues a valid CITIES export permit for rungsuryanum, and a proper import is in place here in the US, and USDA allows the plant into the country, then it is legal here. This is apparently what happened twice that I know of, as plants were being openly sold at the Tamiami show and at Redlands. Thus, the Lacy act is not applicable since the exporting country and the US legally allowed the plant to move across borders and there is no way to determine if the plant was nursery raised. There are thousands of seed raised rungsuryanum in Thailand, as well as flowering size plants of dozens of primary hybrids. We have all seen the photos. There is nothing illegal about that.
That is your interpretation, but not true (for U.S.).
I would like to see the u.s nurseries get them from Thailand and "legally--openly" sell them now. 🤣 So far, I have not seen that happen yet....why would they give up such an opportunity to make money?
 
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It's not like every plant have a CITES certificate associated with it, like each plant with the QR code for the CITES cert. More importantly, if someone wants to sell an illegal plant, they can print and fake a CITES certificate so the plants look like they are artificially propagated. Do vendors provide the CITES certificate for plants? My experience is many of them do not.

Again not encourage obtaining plants that are illegal.

But raising the question - how do you know your plants are artificially propagated or illegal picked, raised, then sold? The reality is that we can't and it near impossible to identify. Not saying regulation should be abandoned because regulation is needed to ensure ethnically raised plants, but we as consumers rely on the vendors transparency and not all vendors are transparent and always ethical because making a profit in the competitive world of orchid sales is very difficult.
Most jungle collected plants look like garbage, and most die very quickly after collection. The time they spend getting to a nursery while they are bare root does them in.

Dave
 
To make this clear for USA growers....again....

It is not legal to own or trade in Paph runsuriyanum or its hybrids in the country. This comes directly from my contact at USFWS. The foreign vendors at our shows bring them in as 'Paph hybrids' as there is very little done in the way of enforcement by USDA when they inspect imports. They are mainly concerned with invasive pests entering the country.

It is not worth the risk for me to have this species in my nursery. The potential fines, as well as likely losing my CITES certification outweigh how amazing the species and hybrids are.

Dave
 
"and there is no way to determine if the plant was nursery raised"? Wouldn't that cast doubt on the validity of a CITES certificate indicating the plants were legally artificially propagated?
Of course it does. Same applies to pre CITIES paphs. Who can say your stonei was actually seed raised? And that’s my point. Speaking to imported plants, if the exporting country issues a CITIES to export seed propogated species, and the USDA allows the plants to pass, where is the obvious illegality? Implied? Only the country of origin can enforce its borders. Once the plants get out, the circumstances and legalities become so convoluted and lacking in clarity that assertions that someone’s plant is “illegal” should be made with caution. As I have said in multiple other threads, I think every person on this list and every other slipper enthusiast any one of us knows either has illegally collected plants in their collection or plants derived from illegally collected plants. For the hard core conservationists among us, and I count myself in your ranks, remember that every single Paph and Phrag available everywhere in the world is or was derived from a collected plant. Not going to hijack another thread with a CITIES discussion.

Happy Father’s Day tomorrow to all the Dads!

Best,
 
To make this clear for USA growers....again....

It is not legal to own or trade in Paph runsuriyanum or its hybrids in the country. This comes directly from my contact at USFWS. The foreign vendors at our shows bring them in as 'Paph hybrids' as there is very little done in the way of enforcement by USDA when they inspect imports. They are mainly concerned with invasive pests entering the country.

It is not worth the risk for me to have this species in my nursery. The potential fines, as well as likely losing my CITES certification outweigh how amazing the species and hybrids are.

Dave
Dave, my contact at USFWS told me the issue with this species, as opposed to helenae for example, is that the Loatian government is making a lot of noise as rungsuryanum is a spectacular species. Similar to what happened with kovachii, they want their plants back. One Thai seller at Redlands told me when I asked they did have rungsuryanum on their import papers. Not hybrids. For whatever that’s worth.
 
My contact told me rungs is not legal.
@ Rob at Puyallup, strictly speaking, for Paphs, the seedlings(species or hybrids)in flasks are illegal if the parents/grandparents are illegal.
 
Rungsuryanum are being openly sold in the EU and the owner of the nursery is telling his customers the plants were imported legally. There is another thread here about this. I think we all know who it is. This species is going to go down as one of the biggest messes in our lifetime, after kovachii. The primary hybrids are everywhere in the US, EU and Asia. Several large nurseries in the US have seedlings and hybrids already on the benches. It will be interesting to see how this resolves itself.
 

Lacey Act​

Issued: October 8, 2008
On May 22, 2008, the Lacey Act was amended to make it illegal to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce, any plant-with limited exceptions-to be taken or traded in violation of domestic or international laws.
 
Honestly, I’m surprised that the kovachii fiasco took this long to be mentioned in this thread. Anyone that will take the time to read the book about how kovachii came to be in the States will have a way better understanding of this exact issue.

Spoiler alert: it’s a mess, and like someone else said on this thread, all it takes is one agent that cares to investigate and it will all come crumbling down…
 
The problem is this: Anyone who sells plants commercially cannot and must not use illegally imported plants - unless they make hybrids from them.

Anyone who imports such plants privately can be fined if the customs officer takes a closer look. I don't know how prosecution works in the States but here a public prosecutor looks at it and if you've done nothing else wrong it ends up in the wastepaper basket. After all its not about drugs that you use to endangering others then by driving a car.

But what we here in EU also have are discussions by private individuals who have never come into contact with law enforcement authorities or the like and believe they are about to end up in prison for some negligible matter. I am also sure that there are serious differences between the individual states in the US.

We also have some commercial orchid growers here in the forum for whom the legal situation is to be assessed quite differently than for private individuals due to their situation.
 
To make this clear for USA growers....again....

It is not legal to own or trade in Paph runsuriyanum or its hybrids in the country. This comes directly from my contact at USFWS. The foreign vendors at our shows bring them in as 'Paph hybrids' as there is very little done in the way of enforcement by USDA when they inspect imports. They are mainly concerned with invasive pests entering the country.

It is not worth the risk for me to have this species in my nursery. The potential fines, as well as likely losing my CITES certification outweigh how amazing the species and hybrids are.

Dave
Apparently, some folks are not familliar with the vicious travesty perpetrated upon George Norris? Morris? a few decades ago. Someone falsely reported him for illegally importing some newly discovered Paphs/Phrags. USFW swat team raided the elderly and infirmed couple's home, despite having NO evidence at all of any endangered newly-discovered species being imported illegally. He and his supplier from a nursery in South America were arrested. He lost EVERYTHING, including his house, trying to defend himself. The South American vendor managed to flee the USA, before the trumped-up kangaroo court trial.
The officials, who self-righteeously "protected" the non-existent endangered species, typically destroy any genuinely protected species that they DO find, as soon as they finish documenting the species in preparation for the trial. At least, that didn't happen in this case, since there were NEVER any illegally imported protected species plants found..
Bureaucracy at its finest, or, more accurately, at it its worst.
 
care to name them here since you said they openly have them on the bench(for sale)?
At Tamiami and Redlands 2 Thai vendors had them on their sales table. I won’t name them as that’s not my style. The situation with rungsuryanum is between them and USDA who inspected and passed their plants for sale in the US. Also, between them and the USDA agents who I presume were at Tamiami and/or Redlands as I know they frequent both shows due to the heavy international presence.

In the US, there are several large nurseries that have seedlings and hybrids ready to go. They just need the plants to be legal. These plants are literally everywhere in the US, EU and Asia.

Further, regarding the Lacey Act, if country A issues an export permit and country B allows the plants to pass inspection, and Joe Smith walks past a sales booth and buys a plant, where is the illegality? While technically one could trace illegality all the way back to a local Villiage in Laos, that would be a very difficult case to prove and would be a huge waste of time. Like helenae, vietnamense, Phrag andreettae, most Kovachii hybrids, etc., the illegalities in the slipper world are too many to count. Why rungsuryanum is such a sore spot is because the Laotian government is making so much noise. They want their plants back.

I knew George Norris. His problem was he plead guilty to the charges and did not go to trial. He made a lot of claims after the fact to get out of his guilty plea, but to no avail. Had he stuck to his guns he would not have suffered as he did. He had no illegal plants and the above post is spot on. The other issue with George was that he put his house up as collateral for the bail for said Peruvian nursery owner who did get caught at the border trying to enter the US with illegal plants labeled as Maxillarias and hybrids. I assume, and this is just an assumption, when said Peruvian nursery owner jumped bail and returned to Peru never be seen or heard from again the prosecutor got angry and went after George. But that’s just a personal take on that. Not to mention George’s rather loud online rants against the prosecutor, many of which were overboard and got into the prosecutors hands. Rumor had it the case against George was going to get dropped until George went public with his smear campaign. But if you knew George that’s the way he was with everyone.

Best,
 
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