Not sure what the program is called but they're not confiscating people's fucking gardens or some shit like the title implies. Based on the video and the website page it's greasy spics and beaners in Central and South America clear-cutting and poaching endangered exotic succulents and cactuses, plants that grow very slowly.
They're confiscated at the border for the same reason poached elephant tusks are.
Rather than destroy the plants it would seem they give them to domestic nurseries for cultivation and propagation and then sell them from their own stock, which undercuts the spic market who are bulldozing pristine ecosystems for some pocket change so they can buy more Tecate.
In theory the program could entirely pay for itself if they resell the plants which it sounds like they do.
Of all the dumb ways we waste money this is very far from the top.
**EDIT:** The program is called CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora).
If someone smuggled in a tiger cub with false paperwork saying it was a cat it's be confiscated but they aren't going to just kill the tiger cub. They give the originating country 30 days to ship it back but if they don't respond (which I imagine these shit holes don't bother to for plants) they would give the tiger cub to a zoo or something. Same logic with plants only they end up in botanical gardens which are functionally plant zoos.
I like botanical gardens and zoos. This is a good program. Fuck off with the lolbertarian editorialized ragebait title.
Not sure what the program is called but they're not confiscating people's fucking gardens or some shit like the title implies. Based on the video and the website page it's greasy spics and beaners in Central and South America clear-cutting and poaching endangered exotic succulents and cactuses, plants that grow very slowly.
They're confiscated at the border for the same reason poached elephant tusks are.
Rather than destroy the plants it would seem they give them to domestic nurseries for cultivation and propagation and then sell them from their own stock, which undercuts the spic market who are bulldozing pristine ecosystems for some pocket change so they can buy more Tecate.
In theory the program could entirely pay for itself if they resell the plants which it sounds like they do.
Of all the dumb ways we waste money this is very far from the top.
**EDIT:** The program is called CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora).
If someone smuggled in a tiger cub with false paperwork saying it was a cat it's be confiscated but they aren't going to just kill the tiger cub. They give the originating country 30 days to ship it back but if they don't respond (which I imagine these shit holes don't bother to for plants) they would give the tiger cub to a zoo or something. Same logic with plants only they end up in botanical gardens which are functionally plant zoos.
I like botanical gardens and zoos. This is a good program. Fuck off with the lolbertarian editorialized ragebait title.