Journal Number 94
February 2005

EDITORIAL

CITES, Orchid Thieves, And The Code
"The orchid has the unfortunate character of being attractive to man"
By Ian St George

In 2002 Ernest Dobbs wrote a piece he called "The Phragmipedium from Peru" [2].

He compared the story to Cinderella: "The themes of passion, power, politics, self-indulgence,
and colossal ambition for world recognition and credit are all present in the current account
of the lady's slipper, or more specifically, the Phragmipedium from Peru.

It is not a very pretty depiction from the chronicles of orchid culture…. the subject here concerns a dark and disgraceful moment in the history of orchid culture. It is the ultimate disgrace of man that he will sacrifice law, honour and the actual earthly existence of another species, an orchid plant, for the unknown eventual price of a moment of passing glory."

On 18 June 2002 Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida issued a statement on
the net announcing they were jubilant about a spectacular new species of Peruvian orchid -
Phragmipedium kovachii - which they were the first to describe for the botanical world.
This news should have encouraged praise and congratulations the like of which the orchid
world had not witnessed in over a century. "In truth," Dobbs wrote, "it has probably started
an era of antagonism, which may wreck professional reputations".

The discoverer Michael Kovach told The Miami Herald he had spotted the new species at a
roadside stand at a crossroads called El Progresso, near Myombomba in northern Peru, a
place that he called "the Holy Grail of orchids". Kovach said he seen a small 500 plant colony
of the rare orchid, but that the area had later been stripped of every plant, including seedlings.
He flew to Miami with the orchid in his luggage. There were rumours the orchid had already
been smuggled into Florida and was selling for $10,000. The orchid may by then have been
very close to extinction in its natural habitat.

In July 2004, after a year long investigation, a Tampa grand jury indicted Michael Kovach on
charges of smuggling and illegally possessing Phragmipedium kovachii. Kovach could have
had five years in prison and a fine of $250,000, but he got probation and a nominal fine of
$10,000.

A Peruvian orchid grower was sentenced in July to a year and nine months in federal prison for scheming to smuggle endangered tropical lady slipper orchids into the United States. Manuel Arias Silva, 70, shipped internationally protected wild orchids intermingled with nursery-raised flowers to a Texas dealer several times "to feed the desires of high-end hobbyists". He admitted shipping 2,050 orchids, including the endangered Phragmipedium species, worth $45,500 from Peru through Miami to suburban Houston. Co-defendant George W. Norris of Spring, Texas, also pleaded guilty to six related charges. He faces up to five years in prison for each of the seven counts, and for each count could also be fined twice what he gained from his conduct, twice what he caused others to lose, or $250,000, whichever is greater.

There were fears the Kovach/Selby incident might demonstrate the ineffectiveness of laws
and treaties enacted to protect endangered species. Some believed that in a materialist world
the laws would be set aside when such colossal sums of money were to be made from the
hybridisation and cloning of a new orchid. Many will now be relieved that the United States
government has enforced the regulations of the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species (CITES). The U.S. signed the treaty in 1973, but many orchid growers
had no faith it would be enforced.

The New York Times wrote "Mr Kovach said he wondered how he could have been expected to
know he was violating an international treaty, because at that point neither he nor anyone else
in the world had any idea what the plant was." Yet Phragmipedium, Paphiopedilium, and all native
lady slipper orchids are known and easily recognized by anyone involved with orchid culture.
All Phragmipedium orchids are listed in Appendix 1 under CITES: it is forbidden to remove
them from their natural habit, except for extraordinary scientific purposes.

Kovach had gone to Selby Gardens, left the live orchid and a dried flower and returned home to
Virginia. Before leaving, he asked for one thing: name the orchid for me. The scientists did.
Dr. Higgins: "We looked at it and said, 'Wow, where did you get that?'" They set to work that very evening and worked all night as an illustrator drew and a colleague wrote the plant description.

The New York Times quoted Dr Wesley Higgins, director of systematics at the Marie Selby
Botanical Gardens: "Some people question whether CITES always provides the best protection
for … endangered species.… This was for elephants, rhinos, zebras, that type of thing….
Plants are different. With one specimen, you can propagate it, or in a single seed capsule get two million to five million seeds. And in the laboratory, you can get a large number of those seeds to succeed."

The orchid community in Florida knew that Dr Eric Christenson, a noted taxonomist, was in
Sarasota finishing his own manuscript covering the same Phragmipedium for publication.
Dr Christenson named the new species Phragmipedium peruvianum. He had worked from photographs and specific information passed to him from colleagues in Peru. He had never possessed an actual plant.

Taxonomic rules require the name "peruvianum" to be rescinded in favour of the earlier
"kovachii". The net statement made by Selby Gardens was clearly intended to remind the public
of the rules: "In the botanical world, the institution and author that describe a new species will
have their names forever linked with that species. The discovery of a new species starts a
scientific race to publication where the winner earns the right to name the species." Who
publishes first, names the plant. Christenson referred to Selby Gardens in The Times as "
...a rogue institution involved in an illegal act."

Dobbs remarked on the obvious intent of the Selby net statement. He concluded, "(Elsewhere)
we have enacted a law whereby an individual may not profit in any way from a crime, including murder, that he or she may have committed, and publish a book or enter into any commercial venture containing the details of the event for the purposes of profit. Perhaps the time has come for more enforcement power to be put into the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). The time has come for us to consider the moral correctness in an illegal act being ignored so that the individual who broke a law, such as the importation of illegal plants, including orchids as discussed herein, be forbidden by law to either intangible benefits, such as naming a plant, or tangible results of a broken law, such as profits from the sale of the plant, or plants, in any manner whatsoever."

One can only agree: the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature is out of step with the moral sentiments of our time: drug cheats should not keep their Olympic medals, and nomenclatural cheats should not keep their specific names.

References
1. http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/9686/rare.htm
2. http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16779/94591