Nick wrote:
The Feds have never cared and will never care about your legally-obtained personal VFT collection unless they decide it is another devil-plant such as cannabis. They do currently care if you take your VFTs from protected areas, but not enough to deter some poachers. I would like more progress on this front.
They are sentencing some poachers when caught now.
A poacher who stole 970 venus flytraps in N.C. is sentenced to prison
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mor ... cfb94c5346
It's not easy to catch the poachers though. Sometimes the locations where the VFTs live are at least 400 meters or so from a road. I've been to some sites and there haven't been any rangers driving by for long periods of time, so it wouldn't be difficult for a poacher to go there, dig up 30 plants or so, and then head for another site. Some sites are off trails which are closed by a locked gate - I've been told that the poachers ride a bike around the gates, dig up the plants, load them into a bag, and then ride back around the gate.
The other big thing affecting the plants of course is loss of environment - I've been to some sites where they are building houses or roads and the plants are just on the edge of the road (and will probably get dug up when the road is paved) or on an empty lot (which to me means there probably were plants on the lots before the houses were built).