0:02

School of humans.

0:11

Deep in Peru's cloud forests, a

0:14

stream of fog weaves past tree trunks,

0:17

mist blankets the undergrowth, filtering

0:19

the sunlight above and supplying moisture

0:21

to the plants below. The

0:23

result is one of the most diverse

0:26

ecosystems on the planet. They

0:28

are up to three thousand species

0:30

of orchids here, more than anywhere

0:33

else in the world. The

0:35

forest has a way of seducing people,

0:38

and in two thousand and two the Sirens

0:40

Lord James Michael Kovac to Peru.

0:47

An orchid enthusiast, Kovak flew

0:49

there in search of the Holy Grail, in

0:52

search of flowers nobody could see

0:54

anywhere else, And one day,

0:56

as he walked past a roadside flower vendor,

0:59

his heartly jumped out of his chest.

1:04

It was a Lady Slipper, a pinkish

1:06

purple orchid with giant petals

1:09

unfurling like the wings of a butterfly.

1:13

Kovak was mesmerized.

1:19

He began haggling with the shopkeeper, but

1:21

they refused to budge. The

1:24

owners knew they had something special, so

1:27

Kovak paid the asking price three

1:29

dollars and sixty cents. A

1:34

week later, Kovak had printed his boarding

1:36

pass home, he slipped the orchid

1:38

into a cardboard tube and boarded

1:40

a flight to the United States. When

1:43

he landed in Miami, customs

1:45

officers failed to stop him,

1:48

so Kovak made his way to Sarasota

1:50

to the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, home

1:53

to one of the most diverse orchid collections

1:55

in the world. Kovak

1:58

brought the specimen in and watched

2:00

the reactions. According

2:03

to journalist Craig Pittman's book The Scent

2:05

of Scandal, the flower sparked

2:08

a simultaneous wave of eye widening

2:10

and mouth opening. Nobody

2:13

bothered to ask if he had acquired it legally.

2:16

Shortly after, Selby published

2:18

a scientific description of the new orchid,

2:21

They named it Fragmipedium

2:23

kovakii. Then

2:26

phone lines at the US Fish and Wildlife Service

2:29

started to buzz. It

2:31

was Peru. An American botanical

2:33

garden, they claimed, was saying it quote

2:36

discovered an orchid that had been clearly

2:38

smuggled out of Peru. Soon,

2:41

armed agents were knocking on Kovac's

2:43

door. They

2:46

confiscated his papers and more than

2:48

three hundred plants. Indictments

2:51

streamed in the gardens

2:53

were fined for violating the endangered species

2:55

Act, the garden's orchid expert

2:58

placed under house arrest. As

3:00

part of the punishment, the garden had to

3:02

buy a full page ad in a trade

3:05

magazine apologizing a subtle

3:07

message to other institutions that they

3:09

should learn from Selby's mistakes.

3:15

That was the dirty secret. In

3:17

botany, this type of low

3:19

key smuggling was par for

3:21

the course. In fact,

3:23

when activists tried to change the name of

3:26

fragment pedium kovakia, arguing

3:28

it was wrong to name the plant after a person who

3:30

poached it, scientific authorities

3:32

shrugged and did nothing. This,

3:35

they said, was too high a standard. If

3:38

botany reclassified every plant

3:40

name for smugglers, poachers, and thieves,

3:42

the entire field would suffer quote

3:45

major nomenclature instability. In

3:48

Layman's terms, it would throw the entire

3:50

scientific field into turmoil. On

3:55

this podcast, we've explored the

3:57

crimes of obsessed hobbyists, of

4:00

organized gangs, and even corrupt

4:02

governments. But what about

4:04

the elephant in the room. What

4:06

about when the places entrusted

4:09

to conserve plant life are

4:11

committing the crimes. In

4:14

this last episode, when the worlds

4:16

of policy and piracy collide,

4:19

I'm summer rain Oaks from school

4:21

of Humans and iHeart podcasts, This

4:24

is bad Seeds. In

4:34

the early two thousands, the Selby scandal

4:37

would divide orchid collectors. Some

4:40

complain that this was government overreach.

4:43

Others wailed that it was about time

4:45

rich Western institutions had been taking

4:47

credit for quote unquote discovering

4:50

plants that natives knew about for

4:52

ages. But

4:55

the fight went far beyond claims of who

4:58

got there first. For many,

5:00

the problem was the profit motive. Kovac

5:03

told investigators he planned to artificially

5:06

propagate the smuggled flower and mass

5:09

and those are his words. He

5:11

didn't express any intention to

5:13

share future profits with the people

5:15

in Peru who had actually discovered

5:18

and were actively protecting the plant.

5:21

In Botany, this kind of behavior,

5:24

smuggling a plant and then getting rich

5:26

off its mass production, conjures

5:28

a painful past, especially

5:31

in South America.

5:35

You start to hear them call Henry

5:37

Wickham the Pirate of the Amazon

5:40

and the destroyer of worlds.

5:42

That's Joe Jackson. He's a writer.

5:44

I'm the author of At the End of the World.

5:47

And he's an expert on one of South America's

5:50

most reviled villains, an

5:52

Englishman by the name of Henry

5:54

Wickham.

5:57

He was born in eighteen

6:00

forty six, had a comfortable

6:02

middle class upbringing until

6:05

his father died in one of the cholera

6:07

epidemics in eighteen fifty five

6:10

or eighteen fifty six. And you

6:12

know, back then you didn't have pensions, and his

6:14

mother had three kids. He had a dream

6:16

in drastic descent in class,

6:19

and he had a spirit of adventure, and he had

6:21

a talent for art. And

6:23

at that time, if you were an adventurous boy

6:26

in the British Empire, you went out

6:28

to the wild places and

6:30

you explored, and you wrote a book

6:32

about your travels. And Henry thought

6:34

he was ready made for that. The

6:36

explorers were the astronauts

6:39

of that generation, and Henry

6:42

wanted to do that.

6:43

So Henry, desperate for

6:45

both money and adventure, set

6:47

out into the world, spending his twenties

6:50

exploring places like Belize and Nicaragua,

6:53

hoping the jungles would give him material

6:55

for books and maybe even

6:57

change his family's fortunes.

6:59

He wasn't by science. He was driven

7:01

by ambition. I mean, he kind

7:03

of wanted to come back up in the

7:05

world from what he had lost.

7:07

He was ambitious,

7:12

sometimes to his detriment. Henry

7:15

was a thoughtless explorer. Consider

7:17

the time he brought his wife Violet to the

7:19

islands near Papua New Guinea.

7:21

There were still cannibal tribes

7:23

and some of the islands around there, and

7:26

Henry was pretty impulsive, and some of

7:28

the natives had stolen

7:31

a couple of his canoes, and Henry

7:33

got rene, and he took some of his workers and

7:35

he went paddling after them and left

7:38

Violet on that island for I don't

7:40

know, like ten twelve days like

7:42

that, by herself, and she knew there

7:44

were cannibals around.

7:46

Turns out that leaving your wife alone

7:48

on an island inhabited by cannibals not

7:51

a great recipe for a happy marriage. Violet

7:54

ended up being okay, but their union

7:56

not so much. Henry's

8:00

absent mindedness aside, his travels

8:02

helped him become something of an expert on

8:05

rubber, and this

8:07

was the eighteen seventies. Rubber

8:10

was big. Railroads, telegraph

8:13

companies, bicycle manufacturers, hose

8:15

and gasket makers. All of them

8:17

were starving for the stretchy stuff.

8:19

Rubber was a central component.

8:22

Everything was steam driven, so he had giant

8:24

turbines. You had these giant pistons, you

8:27

had looms, steam powered looms,

8:29

and you had the British Empire's

8:32

navy. And with all of these

8:34

moving parts, you needed oil.

8:36

But you also needed rubber

8:38

to cushion the blow.

8:41

Problem was there was only

8:43

one place to get rubber, the

8:46

Amazon Basin. About

8:50

ninety percent of the world's latex came

8:52

out of Brazil, and that demand,

8:55

derived from the poetry heavy at

8:57

Braziliensis, was fueling

8:59

a boom of wealth. Entrepreneurs

9:02

flooded Brazil, laying thousands

9:04

of miles of railroad track and erecting

9:06

resplendent buildings sculpted

9:09

from the finest European marble. The

9:11

British wanted in on it.

9:14

They needed to find some

9:16

way of getting rubber from

9:19

the forests of Brazil to

9:22

the British empires of.

9:23

Possession, and that's when they set

9:25

eyes on Henry Wickham.

9:28

And the director of Q Garden guy

9:31

by the name of William Booker wrote

9:33

to the council and said, find me that guy.

9:36

He knows something about rubber. So

9:38

Henry did not go to the Amazon

9:40

thinking he was going to be a secret agent

9:42

for Q, but in a way he

9:45

became a secret agent for Q because

9:47

Booker Rhodehiman said, would you

9:50

agree to be our agent and bring as much

9:52

rubber back as you possibly could?

10:00

I agreed. In eighteen seventy

10:02

six, he paddled down the Amazon River

10:04

and moored his boat near the town of Boeien

10:06

by a grove of potter trees. There,

10:10

Henry enlisted a group of locals

10:12

to help them collect more than seventy

10:14

thousand rubber seeds, wrapping them

10:17

in banana leaves.

10:20

When it came time to leave the country, Brazilian

10:23

officials asked Henry if he had any

10:25

seeds on him. He lied and

10:27

said he had some, but that they were

10:29

academic specimens.

10:31

Said I've got some rubber seeds, and he paid

10:34

the tear of you know, about ten

10:36

or twelve seeds. I forget the exact

10:38

number, but it was very low.

10:40

It was an undercount of say sixty

10:42

nine nine ninety.

10:47

He saund off and he brought as seeds to Hugh

10:50

Gardens, and twelve

10:52

percent of them survived.

10:54

British scientists grew the seeds and

10:56

sent the surviving specimens to the British

10:59

Empire's colonies.

11:00

They eventually transferred them to vast

11:02

plantations around Singapore

11:05

and malays and that became the

11:07

British Rubber Empire.

11:13

The British Empire's rubber plantations,

11:15

all grown from Henry's seeds, would

11:17

utterly destroy the trade in Brazil,

11:20

and it.

11:20

Broke the back of Brazil's

11:23

rubber empire in one year, which is pretty

11:25

dramatic.

11:27

In the eighteen seventies, the South American

11:29

country controlled the world's rubber production.

11:32

By the nineteen twenties it had all

11:34

slipped away. The dramatic

11:36

boom and bust killed Brazil's

11:38

economic momentum with effects

11:41

that are still felt today. In

11:44

Britain, Henry would be knighted, but

11:47

Brazilians would give him a much different

11:49

title.

11:50

He was the devil incarnate. They

11:52

hated him down in Brazil. They

11:55

thought he had raped the nation.

11:58

He'd be called the princip those ladros,

12:01

the prince of thieves. Today,

12:04

botanists have another name for him, biopirate.

12:17

Henry Wickham's theft of those seeds would

12:20

sap in calculable economic potential

12:22

from Brazil while enriching the leaders

12:24

of British industry. But what

12:26

did his actions do for him?

12:30

The British Empire kind of padded

12:32

him on the back and paid

12:34

him the equivalent of about seven hundred dollars

12:37

and said go on your way, buddy. And

12:39

he felt cheated pretty much for the

12:41

rest of his life. And what

12:44

he did for the rest of his life was basically

12:46

try to find discover this

12:49

next great wonder plant.

12:52

And he never really did. He never

12:54

found anything that was as quote

12:56

miraculous as the rubber tree.

12:59

I don't know. It was kind of like some mythological character

13:01

that kind of wanders the world trying

13:03

to replicate his early success.

13:05

If you search the annals of botany, if

13:08

you look at the names of great plant explorers,

13:10

you discover more and more people like

13:13

Henry Wickham, people who today

13:15

we'd call poachers, traffickers and

13:17

thieves, or as experts

13:19

now call them, biopirates. It's

13:25

something of a theme. In twenty

13:27

fourteen, the journalist Sam Knight,

13:29

writing for The Guardian, put it this way quote

13:33

one big problem with plant crime

13:35

is that it is so difficult to distinguish

13:38

from the act of botany itself.

13:41

For decades, biopiracy was

13:44

not the exception, but the rule. Q

13:47

Gardens paid Henry Wickham seven

13:49

hundred pounds to steal, mislabel

13:51

and smuggle those rubber seeds out of Brazil.

13:55

The British East India Company asked

13:57

the Scotsman Robert Fortune to

14:00

sneak into forbidden China and

14:02

steal the country's tea making secrets.

14:05

The list goes on and on. In

14:08

a way, the study of botany

14:10

was just an extension of empire,

14:13

or, in other words, exploitation,

14:17

and most of these early day biopirates

14:19

felt little remorse. They

14:22

had no problems stealing from or

14:24

talking down to native populations.

14:27

In the words of one nineteenth century botanist.

14:30

The Spanish Americas have accomplished

14:32

nothing in the development of the knowledge

14:34

of their rome, floras and vegetable products.

14:37

The Anglo Saxon blood must originate

14:40

and direct all exploitation and

14:42

development.

14:47

This, of course, couldn't have been further from

14:49

the truth. Take San Shona officionalis

14:52

a leafy green shrub with starburst

14:54

blooms that grows across the Andean

14:57

forest. For centuries,

14:59

Peruvians and Bolivians had used

15:01

Saintchona bark to stop fever. They

15:04

were onto something. The

15:07

plant contains quinine, an anti

15:09

malarial. Centuries

15:11

after that discovery, a British

15:13

alpaca farmer named Charles Ledger

15:16

caught wind of the bark's medicinal properties

15:19

in the eighteen sixties. He traveled

15:21

through Peru and Bolivia and

15:25

with the help of his servant, a native

15:27

named Manuel Incra Mammani,

15:29

he stole seeds, smuggled them

15:31

to Europe and sold them to the Dutch.

15:34

The production and study of quinine soon

15:37

exploded. It

15:39

would save millions of lives.

15:42

And that is where the ethics of biopiracy

15:45

gets sort of Harry.

15:47

It's a real gray area in a lot of ways. There's

15:50

always two sides of this biopiracy

15:52

thing. I mean, it's a sovereign

15:54

nation, seems like it should have a right

15:57

to the things that are found within its

15:59

borders. But then what the British

16:01

Empire used when they were taking

16:04

the Tinjona tree for quini, and

16:06

they said, well, look, this is

16:08

for the greater good of mankind.

16:10

And that's something that still is going.

16:13

On regardless of where

16:15

you land on the issue of quinine. This

16:17

long history of biopiracy left many

16:19

nations, especially those in South America

16:22

and Africa, feeling cheated,

16:24

and it wouldn't be addressed by the international

16:27

stage until the early nineteen nineties.

16:30

In Rio de Chenaier you had

16:32

a the nineteen ninety two Earth Summit,

16:35

the first summit that basically

16:37

came up with international regulations

16:39

against biopiracy.

16:44

That year, an international treaty was signed,

16:47

the rules for which are pretty simple. If

16:49

a country is home to a genetic resource,

16:52

for instance, a rare or unique

16:54

plant like rubber, then that

16:56

country is entitled to benefit financially

16:59

from any profits when the plant

17:01

is sold elsewhere. It's

17:04

essentially a thank you for keeping

17:06

and protecting the plant over the past

17:08

few centuries. The same

17:10

goes for a traditional knowledge. If

17:13

a pharmaceutical company learns

17:15

about a plant's medicinal benefits thanks

17:18

to indigenous knowledge, then

17:20

locals deserve some financial

17:22

compensation when the profits roll

17:24

in. In other words, it's about

17:26

giving credit where credit is due.

17:32

Despite these efforts, biopiracy

17:34

remains what Jackson calls a

17:37

rancrous issue, especially

17:40

as corporations get bigger and bigger.

17:43

You still have that kind of sovereign

17:45

rights versus the greater good,

17:48

that kind of pushing pool

17:51

that is part of the argument, that's

17:53

part of the exchange. People don't really

17:55

believe in empire right now, Government empires

17:57

aren't so big, but I mean private

18:00

are a big deal.

18:01

In the US, corporations can patent

18:04

a plant, new breeds can be protected

18:06

by intellectual property law, and

18:09

this has gotten some folks in trouble. In

18:13

nineteen ninety five, the US Patent

18:15

Office granted scientists a patent

18:17

for turmeric, also known as kurkuma

18:20

longa, because it could be used

18:22

for wound healing. Of course, over

18:24

in India, locals had known this for

18:26

centuries, if not thousands of years.

18:30

A couple years later, a Texas company

18:32

tried to patent basmati rice, a

18:35

decision that, to put it lightly, made

18:37

a lot of farmers in India very

18:40

angry. And the treaty itself,

18:42

even though it's prevented a lot of exploitation

18:44

and theft, has its downsides

18:47

because as it's gotten harder to export

18:50

and study some plants, they've only

18:52

gotten rarer and more endangered.

18:55

By the time I wrote a book and talked

18:57

to some dis botanists and then demoloed

19:00

it would go down to the Amazon and study

19:02

these things. Is said. You go down there and

19:04

you're the villain. You don't know whether or not you're

19:06

going to be called a biopirate. Even

19:09

after you've jumped through all the hoops and

19:11

paint all of the fees at

19:13

the airport, they might decide that you're

19:16

trying to steal from them, and they'll

19:19

sequester you for a long time.

19:21

All of you or specimens will die.

19:23

The ability to patent plants in the US

19:25

has also made it a huge target

19:28

of foreign biopirates.

19:33

It's twenty eleven and a field manager

19:36

working at DuPont Pioneer is peering

19:38

across a cornfield when he notices

19:40

an Asian man crouched over a row of maize

19:43

sifting through the dirt. Now

19:48

this isn't just any old cornfield.

19:51

This is a grower field, a place

19:53

where agricultural companies test

19:55

news strains of veggies, ones that

19:57

could be more resistant to disease and famine.

20:01

In other words, exactly the kind

20:03

of plants a foreign nation might

20:05

want to steal and replicate. The

20:08

manager drives over to the visitor and confronts

20:10

him.

20:15

The man named Mo looks startled.

20:17

He explains he worked for a university,

20:20

but he doesn't go into any more detail. Instead,

20:23

he quickly gets in his car and speeds

20:25

away,

20:30

the field manager notifies the FBI.

20:36

Turns out the FBI is already on

20:38

Moe's tail. Mo Hi

20:40

Loong has been sneaking through the cornfields

20:43

of Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa

20:45

with a crew of accomplices, stealing

20:48

ears of corn, rooting up seedlings.

20:51

The FBI discovers that Moe works

20:54

for a Chinese agricultural company, and

20:56

he's been targeting cornfields owned

20:58

by American corporation. His

21:01

goal to unlock the trade

21:03

secrets buried in the DNA of various

21:05

new GMO corn. If

21:08

he can steal the seeds, his employer

21:10

can reverse engineer the plant to

21:13

skip years of expensive biotech

21:15

research required to create new

21:17

strains. Mo and his

21:19

accomplices would later be caught trying

21:21

to ship two hundred and fifty pounds of

21:24

stolen corn seed to China, hiding

21:26

hundreds of small samples in envelopes

21:29

of microwave popcorn. The

21:31

trade secrets hidden in those seeds

21:34

were worth at least thirty million

21:36

dollars. After

21:39

police caught up with him, Mo would be

21:42

sentenced to three years in prison, a

21:44

pretty light sentence for a biopirate all

21:46

things considered, because remember

21:49

that story about Charles Ledger, the guy

21:51

who's sticky fingers helped launch the world quinine

21:53

biz. You may recall he had

21:55

help from a native, a guy named Manuel Kramamani.

21:59

While in Europe, Ledger was celebrated

22:01

as a hero, but in gram Amani

22:04

Back home, locals soon learned

22:06

what he had done, and he'd be arrested,

22:09

beaten, tortured, and

22:11

then killed. The

22:14

difference between a smuggler and a saint,

22:17

between a backstabber and a lifesaver, may

22:20

merely depend on whether you live in the nation

22:23

that was pilfered or the one

22:25

that profited. But

22:27

where there are people willing to kill for a

22:29

plant, there are others who

22:31

are willing to die for one. Their

22:34

story when we return

22:48

Leningrad nineteen forty three,

22:51

Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union

22:53

with a plan. First they

22:55

would surround Leningrad, Then

22:57

they'd cut off the city's supply routes, and

23:00

then finally they'd starved the population

23:02

into submission. The

23:05

goal, according to a high level memo, was

23:07

to quote wipe Leningrad from

23:09

the face of the earth. For

23:12

months, Germans dropped bombs onto

23:14

Leningrad's hospitals and homes. The

23:17

Luftwaffa zeroed in on the food depots

23:19

and markets. Meanwhile,

23:21

Axis troops looted the cities famously

23:23

ornate palaces, transforming them

23:25

into smoldering heaps of ash.

23:29

Leningrad became a tomb. Michael

23:33

Wahlzer, a political theorist, claims

23:35

quote more civilians died

23:37

in the Siege of Leningrad than in the

23:39

modernists infernos of Hamburg, Dresden,

23:42

Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki

23:44

taken together. But

23:47

the Red Army punched back. Snipers

23:51

lurked in the rubble, hid in the bell towers,

23:53

and burrowed under bodies. A

23:56

chorus of anti aircraft weapons boomed

23:59

day and night. Millions

24:01

of ordinary people who did not or

24:03

could not evacuate, stretched

24:06

their bread rations by substituting

24:08

flour with sawdust, and

24:11

in the center of town, a

24:13

team of botanists made a decision that

24:15

would change the course of world

24:18

history forever.

24:25

In nineteen forty three, Leningrad

24:27

housed one of the world's largest seed banks.

24:30

Established two decades earlier, the

24:32

institute was at the forefront of a new

24:35

type of botany. Not as

24:37

a haven for biopirates or greedy monarchs,

24:39

but a new botany for the good of the world.

24:42

In Leningrad, scientists used a

24:45

vast collection of seeds to study plant

24:47

immunity, pathology, and cultivation.

24:50

It was a library designed to preserve

24:52

and protect the plant world's genetic story,

24:55

a repository and intensive care

24:57

unit for some of the planet's rarest

24:59

and most endangered species. As

25:03

the neighborhood around the institute crumbled,

25:06

dozens of botanists working inside

25:08

risked their lives to keep those seeds

25:10

safe. But bombs and mortar

25:13

fire were the least of the botanist's

25:15

worries. Their greatest enemy

25:18

was their own hunger. To

25:23

preserve the seeds, the botanists

25:25

had to keep the collections warm.

25:28

With electricity destroyed and the

25:30

brutal Russian winter barreling in, the

25:33

scientists scoured the charred rubble of

25:35

their beloved city, burning any

25:37

scraps to keep the collection alive. Then

25:43

the ice swept in. With

25:47

the cold came mass starvation.

25:50

Up to one hundred thousand people began

25:53

dying every month. Even

25:55

the rats began to show the rib cages

26:02

inside the seed bank. The botanists,

26:04

grappling with their own hunger, faced

26:06

an unrelenting temptation. They

26:09

had access to rice, wheat,

26:12

peas, oats, corn, the

26:14

work courses of agriculture, and

26:18

yet each scientist, despite

26:20

growing increasingly hungry, refused

26:23

to tap into the collection to save themselves.

26:27

One by one, the botanists

26:29

starved. According

26:34

to The Washington Post, the

26:36

first was Alexander Stutkin, a

26:39

peanut expert. He collapsed

26:41

at his desk. Then

26:43

it was the institute's rice specialist,

26:46

and then another and another. Eating

26:50

the seeds could have saved their lives,

26:53

but each scientist had made a choice.

26:56

They refused to grow or eat the seeds

26:59

because doing so would have destroyed

27:01

the future they had worked toward. The

27:05

Siege of Leningrad lasted eight hundred

27:07

and seventy two days. Over

27:10

that time, at least nine botanists

27:13

starved to death, but

27:15

the seeds survived. Years

27:23

later, those same seeds would

27:25

be crossbread to produce crops used around

27:27

the world today. You and I

27:30

have definitely eaten food descended

27:32

from those Leningrad seeds. In

27:35

a world of biopirates, these botanists

27:38

were something different. What

27:40

journalist Boyce Rensburger called the

27:43

first martyrs for biodiversity, and

27:46

that's where we want to end this podcast

27:49

by focusing not on the thieves,

27:51

the crooks, and the corruption. We

27:53

want to end by shining a light on the

27:55

people making huge sacrifices

27:58

right now to save us.

28:05

In the nineteen forties, the Leningrad

28:07

Seed Bank was a novelty, but

28:09

today there are approximately seventeen

28:11

hundred seed banks across the globe.

28:14

My name's Eleanor Braman, and I

28:16

work at the Millennium Seed Bank at

28:18

the roeb Botanic Gardens Queue.

28:20

The Millennium Seed Bank program is

28:22

the largest conservation resource in the

28:24

world. If there's any

28:27

place to find hope in the future, it's

28:29

here.

28:30

Since two thousand, we've worked

28:32

with ninety seven different countries

28:34

and territories to help conserve

28:36

their native flora. It sounds

28:39

deceptively simple. You just say, well, you just

28:41

go out and you collect some seeds, and then we

28:43

dry them and freeze them.

28:45

Of course, it's a little more involved than

28:47

that. The Millennium Seed Bank

28:49

is the kind of place that would make a

28:51

Doomsday prepper drool.

28:53

The vaulte underground is actually within

28:56

half a meter thick reinforced concrete, so

28:58

we're near an international air The idea

29:00

was it could withstand a plane going down. We've

29:03

also got radiation detection which would

29:05

cut off a supply to the vault if radiation

29:08

was detected, and we have a flood

29:10

protection mechanism, and we have backup

29:12

generators, and we have some solar power.

29:16

And protected in these underground vaults

29:18

are seeds. Lots

29:20

and lots of seeds.

29:23

So we've currently got six walking

29:25

cold rooms that are active, four

29:27

of those are full, and we've got

29:29

space for formal We've currently

29:31

got forty thousand species held

29:34

in our vault.

29:35

Forty thousand species,

29:38

or at the moment, around fifteen

29:40

percent of the world's plants,

29:43

all being saved for the future and

29:46

emergencies.

29:47

We are a real bank in that sense. We save

29:50

things, we hold it for a rainy day, but

29:52

you can withdraw seeds at any time.

29:55

And Millennium is not alone.

29:59

Many countries have their own networks

30:01

of seed banks. In the United

30:03

States, there's a National Plant Germplasm

30:06

System full of cryo preserved

30:08

seeds in Fort Collins, Colorado. Cherokee

30:11

Nation has its own seed vault,

30:14

and at the Smithsonian scientists

30:16

are currently banking the genetics of two hundred

30:18

plus orchids native to the US, more

30:21

than half of which are endangered.

30:23

Goes back to the fundamental that all lives dependent

30:26

on plants. The majority

30:28

of our ecosystems are made up of wild

30:30

plants, and these are the things that are

30:32

providing us with the oxygen that we breathe,

30:35

and preventing floods and

30:38

providing all these amazing services within

30:40

the landscape. We tend to

30:42

focus on things that are threatened in

30:44

the wild, things that are rare so they're

30:47

likely to become threatened, and

30:49

also useful plants, And that's

30:51

in the broadest sense. You know, it could be useful

30:54

for food, for medicine, for

30:56

fiber, for cultural reasons,

30:58

whatever it is.

31:00

Focusing on plants that are threatened

31:03

carries a certain feel good message,

31:06

but it's not like you could bring a species

31:08

back from the dead, like back from extinction,

31:10

right wrong. In

31:13

the nineteen nineties, there was only

31:15

one cylindrocline lorentzi alive

31:17

in the wild. The small tree

31:20

native to the island nation of Mauritius,

31:23

was saved from oblivion when scientists

31:26

successfully extracted and grew

31:29

sells from dead cylindricline seeds.

31:35

More recently, researchers in

31:37

Israel were able to nurture a date

31:39

palm called Phoenix dactylifera

31:42

from two thousand year old seeds.

31:45

That tree now bears the same fruit

31:48

that biblical figures may have eaten.

31:51

And impressively, in twenty twelve,

31:54

scientists discovered a seed of

31:56

a flowering Siberian plant which

31:58

had been buried an ice age

32:00

squirrel thirty two thousand

32:02

years ago, and they successfully

32:05

revived it. And

32:10

you know, that spells hope for the plants

32:12

plagued with poaching or overexploitation,

32:15

because it's here in places

32:17

like this that solutions are

32:19

emerging.

32:20

We're involved in a project in South

32:23

Africa because the illegal

32:25

trade in succulent plants there

32:27

is kind of at a crisis point.

32:30

They seized something like seven

32:32

hundred thousand individual

32:35

plants at the borders to date, and

32:37

some of those plants can be tens to hundreds of

32:39

years old, so you know the impact that that's

32:42

having on these populations is pushing

32:44

them towards extinction. So

32:46

our partners in South Africa have recently

32:49

developed a nursery for

32:52

growing on succulent plants and for training

32:54

their staff in how to propagate

32:56

them and how to restore them to the wild,

33:00

and we've got a really interesting program

33:02

that's just starting to see if you can

33:04

use stable isotopes

33:06

within the plants as a signature

33:08

for where they came from. So then

33:10

could you say whether something's

33:12

been illegally collected or was from

33:15

a reputable nursery. So can we

33:17

help to stop this illegal trade In.

33:19

That way, maybe

33:23

in the not too distant future, buying

33:25

plants will be more secure and transparent.

33:29

You'll be walking through the store and be assured

33:31

that the plant you're buying didn't come

33:34

from a bad seed.

33:41

So we're going to walk just a little bit further

33:43

down this hiking trail we.

33:45

Wanted to end here in Tennessee.

33:48

So as we get out here and take a walk, you'll see

33:50

gravel right at the surface, so very

33:53

little soil, very rocky, harsh

33:55

environment for plants to grow in.

33:57

David linsecom, manager of the Natural

34:00

Heritage Program for the State of Tennessee, is

34:02

showing our producer Gabby around the state's

34:04

Cedar Glades to witness a little miracle.

34:07

Today we are here at Couchville Cedar Glades

34:09

State Natural Area in Davidson County,

34:12

Tennessee. Today we're going to look

34:14

for the Tennessee purple cone flower Echinasia

34:17

Tennessee ensus. It is a

34:19

globally rare species and a state rare

34:21

species.

34:23

The Tennessee cone flower Echinasia

34:25

Tennessee ensus is a gorgeous

34:27

bloom. It kind of resembles

34:29

a spinley purple daisy. It attracts

34:31

important pollinators like bees and butterflies.

34:34

It's also rare. It

34:36

only exists right here

34:39

in Tennessee.

34:40

The plants that occur here many

34:43

of them her nowhere else in the world, including

34:45

our Tennessee purple cone flower. It's

34:48

surprising when you walk this hiking

34:50

trail, the cone flowers scattered

34:52

throughout, and it's so common

34:55

here that probably no one thoroughly thinks

34:57

about it being globally rare. In

34:59

about a fifteen miles of

35:02

range here, and there's only

35:04

five wild populations, and

35:06

that's in the entire world, and it's all right

35:08

here, primarily in Davidson County,

35:10

Wilson County, and Rutherford County in Tennessee.

35:14

The coneflower thrives in this unique environment

35:17

where shallow soil is layered atop limestone

35:20

croppings, but back in the day

35:22

its survival was at risk. In

35:28

the nineteen seventies. It became

35:30

just the second plant to be added

35:33

to the US Endangered Species list. But

35:36

when state and federal entities realized

35:39

it was at risk of disappearing, they

35:41

jumped into action to conservative.

35:43

So it's the two pronged approach of protecting

35:45

the habitat and then working

35:48

with conservation horticulture to collect

35:50

seas, propagate plants, and re establish

35:53

colonies that has really proven to

35:55

be successful for this species.

35:58

Workers acquired land to tech the environment.

36:01

They enlisted botanic gardens to propagate

36:03

the cone flower. They sent specimens

36:06

to seed banks for preservation. Up

36:08

until twenty eleven, the government

36:10

was spending around thirty thousand dollars a

36:12

year to keep the flower on life support

36:15

and it worked. All of that

36:17

effort helped revive a plant

36:19

staring down extinction. Similar

36:25

efforts have worked with other plants you've heard about

36:27

in this podcast. The Saint

36:29

Helena ebony is bouncing back. The

36:32

cacti that you heard about in episode one,

36:34

the ones found in a man's apartment in Italy.

36:37

They're back home in Chile. Io For

36:40

the cone flower, botanical gardens

36:43

and seed banks saved the day. They

36:45

propagated the plants, providing an

36:47

alternate source for obsessed buyers,

36:49

known as Echinasia rocky top, helping

36:52

reduce collection pressures on wild populations.

36:55

Seeds became widely available across

36:57

the country, feeding the demands

37:00

of gardeners and what the

37:02

cedar glades protected. The government

37:04

was able to reintroduce the flower into

37:07

the wild. In twenty eleven,

37:09

the Tennessee cone flower was removed

37:12

from the Endangered Species list.

37:14

The Tennessee cone flower was a big deal because

37:17

it was one of the first plant species ever

37:19

listed on the Endangered Species

37:21

Act and it took thirty two

37:23

years to reach that recovery state. It's

37:26

quite an achievement for myself.

37:28

That was one of the first species I was really

37:30

actively in working with and

37:33

you know, reaching recovery. I mean, that's what our

37:36

job is, to get these species

37:38

off the list, and so being able

37:40

to actually do that and accomplish it

37:43

was very rewarding. It really

37:45

took a small army of folks to make it happen.

37:51

It really does take an army. And

37:53

now you're a part of it, because

37:56

the first step is awareness.

37:58

But if you're still wondering where

38:00

do I go from here? How

38:02

do I help stop this? I

38:05

have a few ideas. First,

38:07

know where your plants come from, especially

38:10

if you're like buying wood or something like that. If

38:12

the person or place you're buying from can't

38:14

tell you anything about the plant source, then

38:17

get it somewhere else. If you're

38:19

dealing with foreign or endangered species,

38:22

always ask for a FIDO sanitary certificate.

38:25

If they don't have one, look elsewhere.

38:28

And please don't buy non commercial plants from

38:30

places that do not have nursery certificates.

38:33

Many can be illegal or poached. Now

38:36

if you must, always ask the seller

38:38

to show their nursery certificate, permit

38:41

or FHIDO Sanitary certificate if need

38:43

be. Support

38:45

your local botanical garden, not

38:47

only are they wonderful places to visit,

38:50

where your money goes straight to the conservation

38:52

and protection of species, and

38:54

you could give to groups like the Environmental Investigation

38:57

Agency, the International Union

38:59

for the concert of Nature or Cactus

39:01

and Succulent Plants Specialist Group. The

39:04

work they do matters, and

39:07

please, if you're in the US and

39:09

witness the poaching or trafficking of plants,

39:11

or have any evidence of any other wildlife

39:14

crime, report it to the US Fish

39:16

and Wildlife Service. Their tip

39:18

line is one eight four four three

39:21

nine seven, eight four seven

39:23

seven. Again that is one

39:25

eight four four three ninety

39:28

seven eight four seven seven.

39:32

I'm Summer rain Oaks. That's it

39:34

for Bad Seeds. Thank

39:36

you for listening and for building a

39:38

future for some good to grow. Bad

39:42

Seeds is a production of School of Humans

39:44

and iHeart Podcasts. I'm

39:46

your Host Summer rain Oaks. Lucas

39:49

Riley is our writer, Gabby Watts

39:51

is our producer, and Amelia Brock is

39:54

our senior producer. Fact Checking is

39:56

by Savannah Hugely and Zoe Farrell. Original

39:59

music is by Claire Campbell, sound

40:01

design and scores by Jesse Niswanger.

40:04

Development was by Brian Lavin and Jacob

40:06

Selzer. Special thanks

40:08

to a voice actor Christopher Goldie.

40:11

Executive producers are Brian Lavin, Elsie

40:13

Crowley, Brandon Barr, Virginia Prescott

40:16

and Jacob Selzer.