North Carolina Aquarium Embarrassment?

[Aidan]

A contrite exercise in damage limitation. If they have so far proved incapable of growing and multiplying Dionaea, I'm seriously unimpressed by their "husbandry" skills and don't have much hope for the other organisms in their care..

[Clint]

Wow talk about spin! They shied away from the issue almost completely and really didn't address our concerns.

[Michael Catalani]

Apparantly, their letter writing skills far outweigh their horticultural skills.

I like the way they mentioned they were in compliance with the ICPS guidelines. I seem to remember the guidelines also state that permission is needed to collect plants. (and in the case of Dionaea, a permit may also be needed) So if they were in compliance, they should have no problem showing us from whom they received permission to collect.

I also dont remember the guidelines specifying that is was alright to take "bucketloads" or " a slew of" plants. They need to reconcile the number of plants taken to the policy. It's also inferred in the original article that the practice is ongoing, and not just a one time affair. I dont read in the guidelines that it is ok to continually rape the wild plants in order to keep up ones collection, but then again, I simply may not be reading between then lines well enough.

[pinglover]

We strive whenever possible to acquire plants from local suppliers

Oh gag me. VFTs are available locally for sale by the bucket. I'm sorry, but I don't believe they had any reason to be trampling around in that area.

Their response was interesting. I'm sorry but it would appear they weren't interested in laying out money to purchase plants when they were there for the taking. We're talking Dionaea and Drosera here. Barring the availability, exactly how difficult is it to propagate those?

[wadave]

Barry,

Perhaps Paul Barrington needs to do a follow-up letter to Star News to correct the possible misconception the readers may have to the original article.

As many of us have expressed in this discussion the article seems to give the impression that it is ok to go out wild collecting.

What is important here is the readers interpretation of the article and not what is going on in the author's head as he writes.

So if the majority of us who read the article have interpreted the author as saying "Go ahead and wild collect here in the Holy Shelter Gamelands" then there seems to be a problem.

Of course this is assuming their reply was infact legitimit!

However it seems obvious to more of us than just me that their "horticulturalist", if that is what he calls himself, has no idea how to grow anything green if he can't manage to keep a local species happy and growing for more than one season.

Bloody hell it sounds like this guy has touble keeping the weeds alive.... does he know they need water and sunlight???

Dave.

[BarryRice]

Hey Dave,

I must agree....growing Dionaea when you're living in south-coastal North Carolina is not rocket science.

[mb01]

Good job. I feel if it weren't for people like the ones in the ICPS alot of this would fall through the cracks. It is a shame the aquarium personnel should even consider something like that.