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Illegal snowdrops

1,500 smuggled primroses also uncovered in Kyiv on St. Valentines’s Day
19 February, 00:00

Ecologists call the period between February and April a black one: early spring flowers, like snowdrops, pasque-flowers, and saffron, which are on Ukraine’s Red List of Threatened Species, are being sold illegally during these months on the streets of our capital. Experts say that the sale of these plants peaks on St. Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14) and International Women’s Day (March 8).

In order to stop this illegal trade, members of the Green Future Squad for Environmental Protection and Kyiv’s Ecological-Cultural Center (KEKTs) held the First Flower Operation aimed at exposing the places where primroses are being sold illegally. As a result of the raid, lots of snowdrops were confiscated at the Livoberezhna, Darnytsia, and Politekhnichny Instytut subway stations and the market near the Vokzalna subway station. The illegal traders are being prosecuted and awaiting the court’s ruling. The members of the raid distributed the confiscated flowers to patients in the polyclinic located in Kyiv’s Holosiivka district. According to the data collected by KEKTs, during this year’s raid 10 times fewer snowdrops were netted than last year. Between February and April 2007 over 5 million rare flowers were sold (a total of over 20 million plants were sold illegally in Ukraine last year). Snowdrops are most frequently brought to the capital from the Crimea and the Carpathian Mountains, where the first snowdrops appear before New Year’s Day.

In order to prevent the illegal sale of snowdrops in the capital, ecologists have suggested broadcasting video clips about the ban on selling Red Book species of plants in Kyiv’s subway system. Kyiv patrolmen should punish the sellers of rare flowers by administrative and legal prosecution. Lawyers say there is nothing in Ukrainian legislation that provides for criminal responsibility in connection with the illegal sale of the Red Book snowdrop. Ecologists emphasize that no one should be buying snowdrops for the fleeting joy these flowers bring because the illegal trade may lead to their total extinction.

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