FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

The title is the question. Beside polution mutations.

I think it will. The plants that are more tolerant to heat and chemicals in the soil will do better than the ones who are not. If it continues for a long time and the plants don't end up dying they may stop being carnivorous and lose their adaptations.

A more likely scenario is that they’ll go extinct from habitat degradation

I agree with Copper. Since there is only one species, they all have very similar needs. They are also being decimated by people who think they are helping CPs (oh, the irony ). Inexperienced conservationists feel they are helping the plants by preventing fires, only to find that weeds and other plants will choke them out if fires are prevented. I think they will go extinct to the wild in 100 years or less .

I think that due to pollution and the destruction of natural habitats, some species of CPs will be more effected than others. For example, VFTs and sarrs are going to have a much harder time in the near future because they're so close to human civilization than helis, because they're on the summits of table-top mountains and some species have only been seen by humans two or three times. I think it's good that lots of people are conserving them and saving location data, especially in the case of the sarrs!

Pollution is making Nepenthes habitats shift higher into the mountain tops. If the mountain summits get to hot for them, the species will be gone in the wild.


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Benny, good point but I think OP meant all carnivorous plants.

There appears to be a lack of strong conservation for CPs. Don’t get me wrong, Meadowview, the various protected bogs, the massive collections of Meizzwang and other serious collectors play their important roles. Atlanta botanical gardens and Wistuba are other important collections that come to mind. However, there is no through initiative to protect CPs such as collecting germplasm (seeds, tissue culture) and herbarium samples. You may think we’re playing an important role growing some CPs but you are not doing much. After all, there was so many populations of Sarracenia, Dionaea, Drosera, Pings, Nepenthess, Cephs, Roridula, etc that existed just a few decades ago that it makes you realize the “huge” collections we have today are really a joke. I’ve been told horror stories of how the bogs were being drained before they could even collect some sarrs from the population for cultivation.

Yet, the fact only a handful of serious collectors preserve whatever biodiversity still exists in CPs just shows you how far we’ve degraded the environment that we created. People like to say how terrible people damaging the environment are thinking we need to leave nature alone but this is just nonsense since humans created the “natural” environments before someone decided to build a house in that environment. Surprise, Native Americans did alter the environment since they wanted lots of buffalo to hunt. Buffalo and many other animals need wetlands to drink water, give birth, etc. And wetland need to be kept clear from brush creeping in. You are reading that clearly: mankind is why a lot of CPs spread far and wide! We created a place where we could live and find food and CPs just happened to play a niche in the ecosystem we formed to feed ourselves. This nature is now being demolished since we’ve realized we don’t need this balanced nature anymore since we can grow food on the mega scale. However, are sanity will go with nature if this degradation of our environment continues sort of how we are getting bored and numb minded with this virus because we have to stay inside away from our real environment: nature!

Furthermore, there is an enormous amount of bickering that is going on in conservation. People say “you shouldn’t do that you may introduce a disease into the environment if you plant a sarr in a bog it once occurred in” or “collecting plants is bad, and you have to get all these papers...” First off, whatever disease we have in cultivation already exists in the wild so you must be stupid if that’s your argument. There’s a difference between collecting plants and poaching. You likely wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for plant collecting which bred the crops we have today. Common sense people... you don’t rip Mexico off by selling their own plants (corn for instance) back to them and make a profit for yourself. The idiots that thought that was a good idea is why we got stuck with the CBD and Nagoya protocol which is why plant collecting has ground to a halt. And most people are only willing to collect if it’s easy so now we got a load of red tape to deal with. And no one wants to worry about possibly dying in Venezuela trying to hike a mountain in search of Heliamphora and then having an angry guy attack you since you didn’t say you loved his political choice...

And so on

I agree again Copper. It is a "look, don't touch" conservation system. Poaching and collecting are very different. I saw this when reading the description on FTS's rehdear giant venus flytrap. Matt collected, tissue cultured, then returned many VFT's back into their bog and no harm done! He actually increased the amount of flytraps by taking 1.

But I would like to add another category to the poaching and collecting. That category is the stupid. The stupid are like this guy, and I will compare everything to him: hello-from-florida-t45910.html (last post, the guy abandoned ship when I informed him, but I got a quote)
What were his motives?
Well, he may have thought "oh, I will save these poor plants by digging them up and selling them to another country! Why, North American pitcher plants surely are conserved in Pakistan!" He literally stole from our country and decimated a bog.
He might have been poaching, as his username suggested, but he said it too nonchalantly.
He may have thought he could then wear a sticker saying "I saved a bug eating plant" and merely had this as something to check off his bucket list.
Either of these options deserves a category, the stupid.

Our world is drastically changing. Not many people have things other than coronavirus on their minds. Before the coronavirus, few have heard of more CPs than the "houseplant" the venus flytrap, and are unaware of conservation efforts never mind other plants. Even if they did know, why send money to helping an ugly orchid with cups hanging off it, when you can save adorable koalas?

Overall, the world is not moving faster than the human race, and it never will. We can't take back the intense coal burning we did in the 1800s, or the nuclear spills nowadays. No matter the amount of serious conservation can take those back. We need to focus on the future. Collect plants, propagate them, replenish them, rebuild habitats, and save our treasure like the Native Americans.

And it does only take one person to ruin it for everyone. I agree it is frustrating, but they cannot allow everyone back in as poaching will speed up again. The issue is there is no way to distinguish good from bad, conservationists from poachers, therefore sites must stay unopened as sad as it is.