Mistaken Location of Pilosocereus robinii

The United States Fish & Wildlife Service Mistaken Location of the Endangered Pilosocereus robinii, Key Tree Cactus

Overview

As a young naïve, recently graduated, graduate student, I was excited about going out and working helping to save endangered species. Since then I’ve worked to try to do such a task. During the course of that work I contacted many employees who work in agencies directly responsible for endangered species programs. Some are very nice and they did the best they could to help me. Others are very rude and are verbally abusive. I have had multiple cases of both. Some of my questions still haven’t been answered. This is years later.

First I want to say if you want to help endangered species you are in for a horrible, frustrating road.

Second I suggest you document everything.

For my research I needed data from the United States Fish & Wildlife Service. During my search I found an error by the “Service,” as they call themselves. I’ve found these things before. I’ve ignored them before. So I thought, well let me tell someone so maybe they will fix it. I’ve told people before, and the results varied. From those past times, I learned I need to document stuff.

My research took the state location of where species are found. Through the service website, I obtained this information as is available for any school student with interest in such a topic. Pilosocereus robinii, the Key Tree Cactus, was shown to be in Florida and California. To this day I guess “Key” in the common name comes from the Florida Keys. Anyway, California and Florida are far apart. How is an endangered plant rare yet found on different coasts? I then researched more into this question by reading the available recovery plan and status reviews. The researched did not provide evidence for California. I concluded it as an error, the plant is NOT found in California. Funny the website map for the species didn’t even show Florida, rather it focused on California completely omitting the species range.

I documented the mistake so that I could explain the problem to a service employee. That was my original rational for why I still have the following information. I saved the website view as a PDF, that PDF is pictured below. Take note that the species is believed to occur in California (red circle) and that Florida wasn’t even pictured (part of circle because Florida wasn’t available).

I think, obviously an error. Let me contact someone to confirm, then maybe contact someone to fix the problem. The FWS has a great ask a question spot. It has both helped me and not helped me in the past. In this case they didn’t help me, but it did help me. The response I received and the message I submitted is below (my information blotted out):

I applaud whoever responded. They tried to help me. They looked at what I found out and went with what they saw. They even suggested I contact another office. Well I called that office, they transferred me multiple times, eventually leading to a Mr. Olah. I think I got his answering machine, but in any case the person in charge was not available. I searched the internet and found his contact information and sent him an email. That email is below (I censored my identification information).

It is February 2017 as I type this. Maybe they still have me on the list to return my email.

Well then I had to go away from my quest for answers due to work. While away one night, I thought to look up the website again. To my surprise the site had changed! California was no longer listed. My email showed no reply from anyone, it was late April 2016 when I checked. So within 6 weeks of my email, the website was fixed! No thank you or anything for my email. Now February 2017, I show what the site looks like now: https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp0/profile/speciesProfile?spcode=Q208 also pictured below.

 

No more California. Look I even helped them find Florida!

Thanks to my research, I helped the service determine and remove a federally endangered species from the State of California of the Endangered Species Act. It was unfortunately for all the school children, scientists, and government employees who were misled by the erroneous information, as I had been. Yet for future children, scientists, and government employees this information has been corrected!

Mistakes do happen. This mistake wasn’t that big of a deal. When you think of cactus, you might think of Arizona or New Mexico. Maybe even California. Florida has fewer species. Maybe they mixed cactus with cactus somewhere that originally caused the mistake. So much other information I found does appear to be correct, mistakes are way fewer. Thank you to the Service for making information publicly available. Unlike me thanking the Service, the Service has yet to thank me for helping them. I don’t care so much about credit. What I care about is helping recover endangered plant species.

Helping endangered species is a brutal fight, an uphill climb against the Service. I have asked to help the Service recover species. They tell me no. They tell me no every single time. Well so I need to make them see I can help. By showing them such an example, I hope they will listen.

This was an example I had documented. So many other, more worthy, activities I don’t have documented. Yet the Service has thwarted my efforts. The Service is only hurting itself when they ignore citizens. The current state of the Service produces a lot of bureaucracy without return of species recovery. It will take big changes. The Endangered Species Act is great and has the potential to be great. Unfortunately they have some bad people managing it. They will have to change before endangered and threatened plant species can be expected to recover. They will have to work with private citizens, not ignore and reject them.

Thank you for reading. Comment for discussion if you would like. Have a nice day!

Regulated Plants of the United States Harmful to European Countries

Regulated Plants of the United States Harmful to European Countries

By TeMarChi

Abstract

International trade moves plants globally, and trade regulations have been developed to prevent the movement of pest plants. Harmful plant species of European countries were examined through the United States Department of Agriculture's Phytosanitary Export Database of the Phytosanitary Certificate Issuance & Tracking System. Groups of countries work together to determine what plants are termed harmful. This provides a glance at the information available on PCIT.

Introduction

Plants have been transported all across the world through international commerce. This included the movement of plants whether they were or were not transported intentionally. Unwanted plants have established in areas introduced. By out competing the native and crop plants, introduced plants have caused economic problems including damages to the environment and agriculture. To help prevent introduction of damaging plants, regulations have been placed on international commerce.

International trade regulations are determined at the country/territory level. The World Trade Organization was formed to help facilitate the opportunity and fairness for international trade and associated trade regulations. Member countries of this organization have decided they will take phytosanitary measures, measures to prevent the movement of agricultural pest and pathogens, including pest plants. Countries have developed programs with personnel to oversee the phytosanitary activities.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the program developed to handle phytosanitary issues involving the international trade of plants in the U.S. The USDA created a database of regulations between the U.S. and other countries called the Phytosanitary Export Database (PExD) of the Phytosanitary Certificate Issuance & Tracking System (USDA 2016). Among accepting requests, performing inspections, updating regulations, and document tracking, this system is available to inform exporters of regulations for plant exports from the U.S.

The objectives of this article is to review plants considered harmful in international trade of U.S. export into European countries through the use of PCIT.

Methods

A 2015 world map shapefile was used in ArcGIS 10.2 that included the shape and name of countries (ESRI 2015). A list of European countries was obtained from Wikipedia (2016). Harmful plants for each country was gathered through the Phytosanitary Export Database (PExD, USDA 2016). The term “Harmful” is used within PCIT for species of U.S. export concern. Usually a plant species may not be shipped from the U.S. to another country if it is listed under “Harmful Organism” for that country. A database was created in a spreadsheet with European countries that matched the map, Wikipedia list, and PExD. The database contained entries with country names and harmful plants. The database information was joined to the map using the ArcGIS join and relate functions. The database and map were examined.

Results

The project database contain 224 entries of 51 different European countries or territories (Table 1) with 38 different listed harmful plants (Table 2). Seven countries did not list any harmful plant species. The most widely accepted harmful plant was Arceuthobium spp. found for 35 different countries (Figure 1). Countries that had Arceuthobium spp. listed did not have any other harmful plant species listings, except Turkey with one additional. Other species listed were found in 8 or fewer countries. The Ukraine had the most listed harmful plants at 25 species. Five countries have the same harmful plant regulations for 23 species, I term East Group. Species listed by the East Group and Ukraine were similar to Russia and Georgia. Russia had fewer species listed at 17. Some of the species listed for Georgia were the same as that of those previously mentioned, some of the species were different. Iceland listed a species unique compared to other country regulations.

Table 1. European countries and territories and associated United States export “Harmful” plant regulations. Within Unique List, the number harmful plants for the country are listed. United Kingdom (UK).

Table 2. The 38 plant species listed as “Harmful” to European countries. An additional fact such as a common name, origin, etc. is provided for each of the species taken from internet searches, do check the facts yourself.

 

Figure 1. Map of the number of United States listed regulated “Harmful” plants of export to Europe.

Discussion

PCIT is a good source list of plants of export concern. Species regulations are not all country specific, rather there are groups of countries with similar regulations. Countries of the former Soviet Union had the most species listed. The rest of Europe had only Arceuthobium spp. listed, with a few exceptions of 1 species difference. These groupings indicate the countries work together to maintain equal standards for imported plants, plants that can become a problem across all of them regionally. Politics plays a role in regulations for international commerce of countries and is apparent in the finding of two groups: the former Soviet Union and the rest of Europe. Keep in mind this review analyzes lists on PCIT. Employees that control the information on PCIT may have few documents of information to update the database. Although not reviewed here, regulations associated with plants and countries can also be reviewed on PCIT. This is a government service with good information for those wishing to understand and learn more about U.S. exports of plant material.

The plant species listed as harmful are typical of invasive species. Most are weedy and can spread through an introduced environment, out compete native vegetation, can alter the current natural flora, and are pervasive to agricultural fields. Not restricted to land environments, Eichhornia crassipes and Elodea spp. are known for clogging water ways. Problems go beyond that of growing in unwanted locations. Arceuthobium spp., Cuscuta spp., and Striga spp. are parasitic pests to other plants. Some can cause harm to people such as Ambrosia spp. allergies, rashes of Solanum carolinense (horsenettle), and the toxic Solanum spp., or being punctured by the spines of Cenchrus pauciflorus, Emex spp., or Sida spinose. All are similar in that they are difficult to remove and control. Taxonomic issues are also apparent as with species synonyms, Acroptilon repens with Centaurea repens and Oenothera laciniata with Raimania laciniata, or the confusion of Aeschynomene virginica a U.S. federally threatened with extinction plant species (USFWS 2016) with the weedy Aeschynomene indica.

This review does not cover all plants and plant trade regulations for European countries. PCIT covers organisms other than plants as well. PCIT summaries information of commodity export from the U.S., not from other countries. There are other plants of concern that can be regulated if they are a known pest. European countries have lists of other pest species (EPP0 2016). This PCIT review does not attempt and should not be confused with all regulations of European countries of target export as they are often numerous and specifically unique to each country, although that material is listed within PCIT. Any export of plant material to another country should be thoroughly researched by the exporter. This review provides only a small portion of trade policy information concerning plants. Other continents can be examined in a similar manner to understand trade policy and review plant species of pest concern.

Citation

EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization). 2016. EPPO Lists of invasive alien plants. Web accessed 6/2016 <https://www.eppo.int/INVASIVE_PLANTS/ias_lists.htm>.

ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute). 2015. World Countries. ESRI.com. Web accessed 3/2016, <http://esri.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=ac80670eb213440ea5899bbf92a04998>.

USDA (United States Department of Agriculture). 2016. Phytosanitary Export Database (PExD). Phytosanitary Certificate Issuance & Tracking System (PCIT). Web accessed 3/2016, <https://pcit.aphis.usda.gov/pcit/faces/signIn.jsf>.

USFWS (United States Fish & Wildlife Service). Sensitive joint-vetch (Aeschynomene virginica). 2016. Environmental Conservation Online System. Web accessed 6/2016, < https://ecos.fws.gov/tess_public/profile/speciesProfile.action?spcode=Q24J>.

Wikipedia. 2016. List of European countries by population. Web accessed 3/2016,         <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_population>.

Thanks for reading. Comment if you would like. Have a Great day!