The illegal trade in orchids - winner of outstanding PhD award

Blog post by Amy Hinsley, outstanding PhD winner 2018.

Winning the 2018 RSPB Centre for Conservation Science Award for an outstanding PhD has been an honour.

I am very grateful to the RSPB, and to my supervisor Dr David Roberts, all at Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology (DICE) and the University of Kent who supported me during my research, and to all of the orchid societies that took part in my surveys.

I worked very hard on my PhD, but the most exciting thing about this award is that it gives me the opportunity to draw more attention to the illegal trade in plants, a serious threat to species that is often not seen as a top priority by conservation organisations, policy-makers, or researchers.

What did I research?

As a conservation social scientist, the work I do focusses on the interactions between people and nature. I took as my case study the trade in orchids, using interdisciplinary methods to understand the behaviour of orchid consumers and traders from all over the world.

With almost 30,000 species, orchids represent more than 70% of all taxa listed by the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the main international legislation regulating wildlife trade.

The make up of the CITES Appendices, showing the large proportion of orchids listed by the Convention. (From Hinsley et al, 2017)

The trade in orchids for horticultural purposes has been taking place for around 2000 years, with some of the most well-known examples from Europe in the 1800s, when wealthy Victorian gentlemen suffering with an intense obsession known as ‘orchidelirium’ drove a huge trade in wild-collected plants.

The threats

These stories seem extreme, but wild orchids are still threatened by collection from the wild today: the IUCN Red List reports that 98% of tropical Asian slipper orchids (Paphiopedilum spp.), are threatened by harvesting. I wanted to use my research to understand what drives this modern-day trade, in particular how the internet has allowed people to get around the strict rules that are meant to regulate it.

A market stall in China selling a range of wild and cultivated orchid species for the ornamental market

I found evidence of preferences for rare species amongst some serious orchid growers who buy their plants online, and also found that social media is used by people from all over the world to trade in orchids, including wild plants.

In addition, CITES is not acting as a deterrent to the most experienced traders, with smuggling and laundering of plants occurring, and online sales being used to sell plants without CITES permits.

The implications of this for conservation are serious, but the illegal trade of a country’s native flora can also remove the economic benefits that a legal orchid trade can bring.

Collecting wild orchids is illegal in many places, but harvesting for trade still occurs.

For example, I found that many countries in Southeast Asia that contributed a large proportion of their species to trade were not trading themselves: Laos had no trade at all but over half of its native species were being traded by other countries, and there was little evidence of these species being taken out of Laos with CITES permits.

Since my PhD

Since completing my PhD I have used these findings to try to improve the situation for orchids. I co-founded and co-chair the IUCN SSC Orchid Specialist Group Global Trade Programme and I have attended, submitted reports to, and spoken at CITES meetings to raise the profile of orchids amongst policy-makers.

I have also contributed my findings to a project aimed at improving law enforcement approaches to the online wildlife trade. Perhaps most importantly, I have been engaging with orchid consumers to try to better understand how to reduce wild-collection, and improve compliance with CITES rules.

Although many species are in cultivation, tropical Asian slipper orchids Paphiopedilum spp. are some of the most threatened by the specialist trade, where consumer preferences are for rare species.

I am now continuing my work on the international wildlife trade and I am applying a lot of the methods used during my PhD to research that aims to disentangle the legal and illegal markets for bear bile in China, as part of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade.

However, due to the problems of ‘plant-blindness’ in the study of the illegal wildlife trade, I am still working on orchids whenever I can, and talking about the orchid trade whenever anybody will let me.