# Endangered



## rs79 (Dec 7, 2004)

http://www.sundaytimes.lk/110807/News/nws_18.html


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## mudboots (Jun 24, 2009)

Very interesting; thanks for sharing the link.


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## ddavila06 (Jan 31, 2009)

thank you very much for sharing! a lot of those mentioned plants are readily available here in the states and not expensive at all fortunately..so hobbyists once again have a good amount saved up imo.


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## ferchu22 (Oct 27, 2007)

Really sad. And some of those species are not so common (Cryptocoryne alba, C. bogneri, C. thwaitesii)


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## illustrator (Jul 18, 2010)

The same are readily available here in Europe as well. But their names are in a state of chaos: some are clearly misidentified while of nearly none exact collecting data are available (the only exeption seems to be _C. wendtii_ "Mi Oya").

And how many _C. wendtii _are really in cultivation and which of those are of wild origin? I think that nobody knows. For instance, did anyone check if _C. wendtii_ "green" is always the same plant or are there differences between clones from different nurseries?

I asked a well-known nursery obout the origin of their plants, but they couldn't tell because nothing was written down and the founder of the nursery is not alive anymore (he was obviously the only one who knew).

Because of this chaos we have a very real risk that we lose some of the diverse plants we now grow. After all, who cares about a bunch of _C. wendtii_ "green", but what if it would be a different bunch from the usually grown one, just with the same name?

I don't know if it is the right time for this, but I am kind of dreaming about a worldwide database were we hobbyists can upload which plants and animals we grow/breed. It would then be easy to see "who has what", but especially which species are kept by very few people and which by "everyone". Also, it will be easy to see who manages to grow the same plants for a decade or more (for aquarium-conservation we need to learn to hold on to our plants for a long time!).

Of course we can't save habitats with a database, nor with growing some few species in an aquarium, but that should NOT be the reason to loose the ones we have right now!

For that, I am also dreaming about a plant-fund, where from every sold plant a few cents are donated to habitat conservation projects in the region of origin. I don't think that we really care if a plant is 5 cents more expensive in the lfs, but those 5 cents from all sold plants added up can generate a lot of money for in-situ conservation!


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