CITES and snowdrops

[annew]

Does anyone have any experience with sending snowdrops from the EU/Northern Ireland to mainland UK? I realise CITES certification is needed, but we have been told that a separate certificate for each species would be required. I don't think CITES was ever meant to be used for anything other than wild species, so the fact that most snowdrop cultivars are hybrids is a very big problem - how do we attribute the cultivars to individual species?

[Vinny 123]

CITES is what it is - a convention in the trade in endangered species and where any individual example comes from is irrelevant. An elephant bred in a UK zoo still needs CITES. Many CITES species require an A10 exemption to be sold WITHIN the UK for EVERY individual of any particular species of animal/bulb/plant - numbers of seeds seem to be covered by one exemption cert'. That said, some CITES species are covered by open general licences WITHIN the UK, so do not require anyone to actually posess A10's.

It is a while since I applied for A10's, but they are not cheap - they were something like £25 each when I last applied. (They used to be free until around 8-10 years ago.)

Contact DEFRA. They interpret and rewrite laws to their own whims, but are generally helpful in providing information.

(A so-called A10 certificate is a certificate (often incorrectly called a licence), that exempts whatever is named/detailed on it, and the person (owner) named on it, from the provisons of Article 10 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act.)

Presumably you have already reckoned on the phyto' hassle as well?

[Vinny 123]

I should have mentioned – hybrids ARE very much covered by CITES.
Any hybrid defaults to the highest CITES ranking (lowest number appendix) of the contributing species. A hybrid between a tiger and a domestic cat would require CITES papers because of the “tiger content”.

One of the conditions of issue of, within Europe, an A10 certificate is that the item is legally held and bred/derived from legally held parent stock. (Which is actually an insane logic as the definition of legally held would stretch back infinite generations, as each generation could only be legal if the previous one was. Politicians and law and even very simple science and logic are never a great combination.)

[annew]

Yes, we know about the phyo hassle!
What happens if the parentage of the hybrid is not known?

[Vinny 123]

Ultimtely, anyone can declare anything on any application for CITEs cert's. In certain instances it is known as (attempted) smuggling.
If you absolutely want to stay within the law, and all interpretations of it, speak to DEFRA - emails used to take only a day or two to get an answer, but I haven't been in that loop for a while.
If the plants have a cultivar name, they may well issue A10's for "Galanthus hybrid/cultivar "XXXXXXX""

DEFRA are there to help - if you are asking for advice you are asking because you want to do things properly, not to avoid things.

I am not suggesting that you do it, but many plants that really need A10s must get shipped against a name that doesn't - if they are very close, they will get through, if they aren't................. With bulbs, the chances must be that the A10 is taken at face value if the match is close - you are unlikely to get Galanthus through if declared as a Narcissus cultivar.