Hi Jerry. Regarding your two "Revolutionary CITES proposals for nursery certification":
Your Proposal #1. I'm not going to comment, not because I have no opinions, but because I'd rather focus on your Your Proposal #2. "Certify nurseries that are truly growing, or buying for resale orchids that are artificially propagated." This provision already exists under CITES. Go to the CITES homepage at: http://www.cites.org/ and type "Registered nurseries" into their search engine. I got 107 hits. The key document is "Conf. 9.19 (Rev. CoP13) Guidelines for the registration of nurseries exporting artificially propagated specimens of Appendix-I species", which is at: http://www.cites.org/eng/res/all/09/E09-19R13.pdf This document says you can already do exactly what your Proposal 2 suggests, at least for Appendix 1 plants. A list of registered nurseries is provided at: http://www.cites.org/common/reg/nu/e-nu-beg.shtml When last updated, there were 101 CITES-registered nurseries, the majority being in India. I see that the Moreno's Colomborquideas nursery in Colombia is CITES registered (Number P-CO-1001). The number of registered nurseries in the USA is zero. I strongly suspect the reason for this astonishing low number can be found in the 3rd paragraph on the right-side column of the 1st page of the summary document on: http://www.cites.org/eng/cop/09/doc/E9-Doc-30-32.pdf which says "It may therefore very well be that the Management Authority of a country of origin does not wish to introduce such a facilitation." Yes, CITES gave the US Management Authority the right to refuse registration of US nurseries. Jerry, I think you are proposing to address the wrong people. Instead of petitioning CITES in Geneva, you should talk to your local representatives (ie, in the USA) about registering your nursery under the existing CITES provisions. Good luck. Peter O'Byrne Still under a rock in Singapore _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) orchids@orchidguide.com http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
