I can't speak for any other country other than the US, but here basically any paph species that was in this country prior to the 1990 ban on collected paphs is legal. So rothchildianum is completely legal here...Even tigrinum, which was described after the ban but based on plants that had already arrived by 1990, is completely legal. When delanatii was rediscovered, it was only a short time before plants of Vietnamese origin were all over the US, even though they were technically illegal...even seedlings.... For US growers, its really a legal issue for paph species that were discovered after 1990. Take care, Eric
At present time the issue in the US is for after 90's paphs, but nothing can prevent FWS, if they are not carefully teached and explained about the risks of what they are doing, to claim backwards that this or that species is, finally, illegal... I just give an example about rothschildianum, propagated in quantities worldwide as everyone knows, but that is definitely in a "shady" position regarding legality. Even I could not find any CITES related informations from Malaysia to England for Kew plants in the 80's...
Anyway the plants prior to 1990 and after 1977, coming from Malaysia, must have been exported as rothschildianum, appendix II as an example, if people really wanted to "enforce" the law. And I clearly demonstrate that it has been, at all time since the early 50's, considered to be a criminal act to collect rothschildianum, for one reason or the other. And before that, rothschildianum was lost in cultivation, completely. Therefore, rothschildianum could be deemed to be illegal worldwide if the people wanted to be "strict". Of course, it would be crazy to do this.
Some cases have been related to illegal import of paphs as Appendix II species, in Europe especially. And in the USA, they seized roths and sands in the 80's because they were illegally collected, even if some had App II permits, as Malaysia claimed they NEVER allowed anyone to collect roths and sands at any time. That's part of the history... If we follow the law strictly.
Back to Sam, the thing is that he has tried to propagate gigantifolium from a plant imported with a CITES - note that the exporter from Malaysia never got any problem after the FWS canceled thoses permits...
But if he was someone to be punished, gigantifolium is available all the time from Indo as wild plants, USD7/plant, minimum order of 100 plants, 4 days delay for the delivery, fresh from Sulawesii - The name of the supplier is Api, for thoses who do want to challenge my claim...
Sam would not propagate something that is so easy to get as big plants if he did not want to do everything right...
That's where the USFWS is completely off target, there ARE collections such as that that enter US, I know it, because I met some Americans in Surabaya couple of years ago, and FWS never found them.
If they really want to protect the species, it is better to target thoses plants, not the origin of breeding stock of tissue cultured plants...