Venus flytraps face loss of habitat

A 'special concern'
North Carolina officially considers the plant a "special concern," but the state laws protecting the flytrap are lax. The North Carolina Plant Conservation Program, part of the state Department of Agriculture, has long desired stronger protections, but admits that with a staff of three it wouldn't be able to enforce stricter rules.

Gadd, a botanist with the program, said the state considered upgrading the flytrap's protection status to "threatened," but decided against it because the designation is largely reserved for plants that have less than 20 populations remaining in the state. The flytrap has more, although only 16 are graded with "excellent" or "good" viability.

"When you look at the grand scope of things, all of those populations are in one small corner in the whole world," Gadd said.

Some of the healthiest flytrap populations include tens of thousands of plants clustered in well-protected spots, including the vast Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg military bases. There, the plants are dependent on programs of prescribed burns that clear out competing vegetation like wildfires would normally do.

Sgt. Charles Smith, of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, said repeated flytrap poachers face only misdemeanor charges and are generally fined less than $200. On rare occasions, they'll get a few days in jail. He recalls catching one poacher more than a dozen times digging up "thousands upon thousands" of flytraps on state land to sell for only a dollar or two each.

"What I understand is that him and his crowd are still at it," Smith said.

Smith and his staff of five cover four counties, where they are tasked with enforcing fishing and boating laws while keeping track of more than 250,000 acres of gamelands. "You could spend 60 days working this and maybe one out of 60 days be in the in the right place and right time to contact these individuals," he said.

Little protection provided
Rarely used federal laws provide a little more protection, limiting interstate transport and sale of flytraps. But the plant's not considered an endangered species, lost behind hundreds of others on the waiting list.

Rep. Carolyn Justice, a Republican who represents the Wilmington area, pushed last year to begin regulating flytraps in the same fashion as ginseng, a plant used in a variety of herbal and Eastern medicines. The state has a permitting process that requires ginseng dealers to document where they acquired their crop, and North Carolina law makes harvesting ginseng on someone else's land a felony.

But Justice's proposal stalled in a legislative committee after the state Department of Agriculture said they didn't have people in place to enforce it.

"Our population down here is exploding," Justice said. "And as we encroach on these forests, we encroach on (the flytrap). We just need to be real careful monitoring how these are harvested and sold."

Some of the most delicate flytrap populations are found on the edges of civilization, just feet from schools or corridors for electrical transmission lines. Misty Buchanan, a botanist with the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, worries about a small patch of flytraps in the heart of Wilmington next to playground blacktop.

Only this year did the state recategorize the population from "fair viability" — not under threat — to "poor viability."

"It's being kept alive only by people who care and want to keep the natural habitat of the coastal plain," Buchanan said.

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