WEBVTT - Episode 8: The Destroyer of Worlds 0:00:02.800 --> 0:00:06.080 School of humans. 0:00:11.920 --> 0:00:15.400 Deep in Peru's cloud forests, a stream of fog weaves 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:19.960 past tree trunks, mist blankets the undergrowth, filtering the sunlight 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:24.439 above and supplying moisture to the plants below. The result 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:27.800 is one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. 0:00:28.680 --> 0:00:31.760 They are up to three thousand species of orchids here, 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:36.199 more than anywhere else in the world. The forest has 0:00:36.240 --> 0:00:39.040 a way of seducing people, and in two thousand and 0:00:39.080 --> 0:00:47.479 two the Sirens Lord James Michael Kovac to Peru. An 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:51.360 orchid enthusiast, Kovak flew there in search of the Holy Grail, 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:55.880 in search of flowers nobody could see anywhere else, And 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:58.840 one day, as he walked past a roadside flower vendor, 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:04.720 his heartly jumped out of his chest. It was a 0:01:04.840 --> 0:01:10.320 Lady Slipper, a pinkish purple orchid with giant petals unfurling 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:19.319 like the wings of a butterfly. Kovak was mesmerized. He 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:23.120 began haggling with the shopkeeper, but they refused to budge. 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:27.920 The owners knew they had something special, so Kovak paid 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:34.559 the asking price three dollars and sixty cents. A week later, 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:38.319 Kovak had printed his boarding pass home, he slipped the 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:41.399 orchid into a cardboard tube and boarded a flight to 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:46.319 the United States. When he landed in Miami, customs officers 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.840 failed to stop him, so Kovak made his way to 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:53.800 Sarasota to the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, home to one 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:58.520 of the most diverse orchid collections in the world. Kovak 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:03.440 brought the specimen in and watched the reactions. According to 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:07.320 journalist Craig Pittman's book The Scent of Scandal, the flower 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:11.799 sparked a simultaneous wave of eye widening and mouth opening. 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:15.560 Nobody bothered to ask if he had acquired it legally. 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:20.959 Shortly after, Selby published a scientific description of the new orchid, 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:27.680 They named it Fragmipedium kovakii. Then phone lines at the 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:32.280 US Fish and Wildlife Service started to buzz. It was Peru. 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:35.960 An American botanical garden, they claimed, was saying it quote 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:41.360 discovered an orchid that had been clearly smuggled out of Peru. Soon, 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:47.320 armed agents were knocking on Kovac's door. They confiscated his 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:51.760 papers and more than three hundred plants. Indictments streamed in 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:55.880 the gardens were fined for violating the endangered species Act, 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:01.119 the garden's orchid expert placed under house arrest. As part 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:03.520 of the punishment, the garden had to buy a full 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:07.919 page ad in a trade magazine apologizing a subtle message 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:13.280 to other institutions that they should learn from Selby's mistakes. 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:19.080 That was the dirty secret. In botany, this type of 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:23.560 low key smuggling was par for the course. In fact, 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:27.519 when activists tried to change the name of fragment pedium kovakia, 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:30.120 arguing it was wrong to name the plant after a 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:35.240 person who poached it, scientific authorities shrugged and did nothing. This, 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:39.360 they said, was too high a standard. If botany reclassified 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:43.440 every plant name for smugglers, poachers, and thieves, the entire 0:03:43.520 --> 0:03:49.280 field would suffer quote major nomenclature instability. In Layman's terms, 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:55.680 it would throw the entire scientific field into turmoil. On 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:59.880 this podcast, we've explored the crimes of obsessed hobbyists, of 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:04.640 organized gangs, and even corrupt governments. But what about the 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:09.080 elephant in the room. What about when the places entrusted 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:14.640 to conserve plant life are committing the crimes. In this 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:19.719 last episode, when the worlds of policy and piracy collide, 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:23.680 I'm summer rain Oaks from school of Humans and iHeart podcasts, 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:36.360 This is bad Seeds. In the early two thousands, the 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:41.039 Selby scandal would divide orchid collectors. Some complain that this 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:45.280 was government overreach. Others wailed that it was about time 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:49.120 rich Western institutions had been taking credit for quote unquote 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:55.919 discovering plants that natives knew about for ages. But the 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:58.880 fight went far beyond claims of who got there first. 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:03.680 For many, the problem was the profit motive. Kovac told 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:07.960 investigators he planned to artificially propagate the smuggled flower and 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:12.839 mass and those are his words. He didn't express any 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:16.120 intention to share future profits with the people in Peru 0:05:16.360 --> 0:05:20.440 who had actually discovered and were actively protecting the plant. 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:25.599 In Botany, this kind of behavior, smuggling a plant and 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:29.760 then getting rich off its mass production, conjures a painful past, 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:34.560 especially in South America. 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:38.960 You start to hear them call Henry Wickham the Pirate 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:41.640 of the Amazon and the destroyer of worlds. 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:44.239 That's Joe Jackson. He's a writer. 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:47.960 I'm the author of At the End of the World. 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:50.359 And he's an expert on one of South America's most 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:57.520 reviled villains, an Englishman by the name of Henry Wickham. 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:02.720 He was born in eighteen forty six, had a comfortable 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:07.000 middle class upbringing until his father died in one of 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:11.200 the cholera epidemics in eighteen fifty five or eighteen fifty six. 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:13.919 And you know, back then you didn't have pensions, and 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:16.960 his mother had three kids. He had a dream in 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:20.520 drastic descent in class, and he had a spirit of adventure, 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:24.479 and he had a talent for art. And at that time, 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:27.200 if you were an adventurous boy in the British Empire, 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:31.479 you went out to the wild places and you explored, 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:34.480 and you wrote a book about your travels. And Henry 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:37.920 thought he was ready made for that. The explorers were 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:42.800 the astronauts of that generation, and Henry wanted to do that. 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:47.960 So Henry, desperate for both money and adventure, set out 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:51.840 into the world, spending his twenties exploring places like Belize 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:55.440 and Nicaragua, hoping the jungles would give him material for 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:59.000 books and maybe even change his family's fortunes. 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:03.040 He wasn't by science. He was driven by ambition. I mean, 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:05.640 he kind of wanted to come back up in the 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:07.760 world from what he had lost. 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:15.640 He was ambitious, sometimes to his detriment. Henry was a 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:19.360 thoughtless explorer. Consider the time he brought his wife Violet 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:21.480 to the islands near Papua New Guinea. 0:07:21.560 --> 0:07:24.640 There were still cannibal tribes and some of the islands 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:28.640 around there, and Henry was pretty impulsive, and some of 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:32.640 the natives had stolen a couple of his canoes, and 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:35.480 Henry got rene, and he took some of his workers 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:38.840 and he went paddling after them and left Violet on 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:42.160 that island for I don't know, like ten twelve days 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:45.600 like that, by herself, and she knew there were cannibals around. 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:49.400 Turns out that leaving your wife alone on an island 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:53.080 inhabited by cannibals not a great recipe for a happy marriage. 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:57.679 Violet ended up being okay, but their union not so much. 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:04.000 Henry's absent mindedness aside, his travels helped him become something 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:09.280 of an expert on rubber, and this was the eighteen seventies. 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:15.440 Rubber was big. Railroads, telegraph companies, bicycle manufacturers, hose and 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:19.480 gasket makers. All of them were starving for the stretchy stuff. 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:23.920 Rubber was a central component. Everything was steam driven, so 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:27.240 he had giant turbines. You had these giant pistons, you 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:31.160 had looms, steam powered looms, and you had the British 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:35.800 Empire's navy. And with all of these moving parts, you 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:40.800 needed oil. But you also needed rubber to cushion the blow. 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:45.680 Problem was there was only one place to get rubber, 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:52.520 the Amazon Basin. About ninety percent of the world's latex 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:55.800 came out of Brazil, and that demand, derived from the 0:08:55.800 --> 0:09:00.520 poetry heavy at Braziliensis, was fueling a boom of wealth. 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:05.840 Entrepreneurs flooded Brazil, laying thousands of miles of railroad track 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:11.040 and erecting resplendent buildings sculpted from the finest European marble. 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:13.480 The British wanted in on it. 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:19.000 They needed to find some way of getting rubber from 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:23.600 the forests of Brazil to the British empires of. 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:30.680 Possession, and that's when they set eyes on Henry Wickham. 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:32.240 And the director of Q Garden guy by the name 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:35.520 of William Booker wrote to the council and said, find 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:39.000 me that guy. He knows something about rubber. So Henry 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:41.600 did not go to the Amazon thinking he was going 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:44.200 to be a secret agent for Q, but in a 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:48.320 way he became a secret agent for Q because Booker 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:51.720 Rhodehiman said, would you agree to be our agent and 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:54.200 bring as much rubber back as you possibly could? 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:03.480 I agreed. In eighteen seventy six, he paddled down the 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:06.160 Amazon River and moored his boat near the town of 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:11.160 Boeien by a grove of potter trees. There, Henry enlisted 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:14.200 a group of locals to help them collect more than 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:20.840 seventy thousand rubber seeds, wrapping them in banana leaves. When 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:24.160 it came time to leave the country, Brazilian officials asked 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:27.320 Henry if he had any seeds on him. He lied 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:31.240 and said he had some, but that they were academic specimens. 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:34.240 Said I've got some rubber seeds, and he paid the 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:37.320 tear of you know, about ten or twelve seeds. I 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:40.280 forget the exact number, but it was very low. 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:44.560 It was an undercount of say sixty nine nine ninety. 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.800 He saund off and he brought as seeds to Hugh Gardens, 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:53.880 and twelve percent of them survived. 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:58.359 British scientists grew the seeds and sent the surviving specimens 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:00.239 to the British Empire's colonies. 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:05.280 They eventually transferred them to vast plantations around Singapore and 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:09.640 malays and that became the British Rubber Empire. 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:16.920 The British Empire's rubber plantations, all grown from Henry's seeds, 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:20.719 would utterly destroy the trade in Brazil, and it. 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:24.720 Broke the back of Brazil's rubber empire in one year, 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:26.160 which is pretty dramatic. 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:30.320 In the eighteen seventies, the South American country controlled the 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:34.280 world's rubber production. By the nineteen twenties it had all 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:39.280 slipped away. The dramatic boom and bust killed Brazil's economic 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:45.200 momentum with effects that are still felt today. In Britain, 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:48.960 Henry would be knighted, but Brazilians would give him a 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:50.280 much different title. 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:54.280 He was the devil incarnate. They hated him down in Brazil. 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:57.520 They thought he had raped the nation. 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:04.160 He'd be called the princip those ladros, the prince of thieves. Today, 0:12:04.400 --> 0:12:19.120 botanists have another name for him, biopirate. Henry Wickham's theft 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:22.480 of those seeds would sap in calculable economic potential from 0:12:22.520 --> 0:12:26.800 Brazil while enriching the leaders of British industry. But what 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:28.920 did his actions do for him? 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:33.400 The British Empire kind of padded him on the back 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:37.040 and paid him the equivalent of about seven hundred dollars 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:40.080 and said go on your way, buddy. And he felt 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:43.480 cheated pretty much for the rest of his life. And 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:45.880 what he did for the rest of his life was 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:52.040 basically try to find discover this next great wonder plant. 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:55.320 And he never really did. He never found anything that 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:59.480 was as quote miraculous as the rubber tree. I don't know. 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:02.199 It was kind of like some mythological character that kind 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:05.320 of wanders the world trying to replicate his early success. 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:08.439 If you search the annals of botany, if you look 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:11.880 at the names of great plant explorers, you discover more 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:15.920 and more people like Henry Wickham, people who today we'd 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:21.680 call poachers, traffickers and thieves, or as experts now call them, biopirates. 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:29.080 It's something of a theme. In twenty fourteen, the journalist 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:31.839 Sam Knight, writing for The Guardian, put it this way 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:35.880 quote one big problem with plant crime is that it 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:40.319 is so difficult to distinguish from the act of botany itself. 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:45.760 For decades, biopiracy was not the exception, but the rule. 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:50.960 Q Gardens paid Henry Wickham seven hundred pounds to steal, 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:55.640 mislabel and smuggle those rubber seeds out of Brazil. The 0:13:55.679 --> 0:14:00.160 British East India Company asked the Scotsman Robert Fortune to 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:04.520 sneak into forbidden China and steal the country's tea making secrets. 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:09.280 The list goes on and on. In a way, the 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:13.760 study of botany was just an extension of empire, or, 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:18.560 in other words, exploitation, and most of these early day 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:23.720 biopirates felt little remorse. They had no problems stealing from 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:28.160 or talking down to native populations. In the words of 0:14:28.240 --> 0:14:30.560 one nineteenth century botanist. 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:34.240 The Spanish Americas have accomplished nothing in the development of 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:37.000 the knowledge of their rome, floras and vegetable products. 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:41.960 The Anglo Saxon blood must originate and direct all exploitation 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:43.200 and development. 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:49.720 This, of course, couldn't have been further from the truth. 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:54.800 Take San Shona officionalis a leafy green shrub with starburst 0:14:54.840 --> 0:15:00.400 blooms that grows across the Andean forest. For centuries, Peruvians 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:04.920 and Bolivians had used Saintchona bark to stop fever. They 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:09.880 were onto something. The plant contains quinine, an anti malarial. 0:15:11.000 --> 0:15:15.320 Centuries after that discovery, a British alpaca farmer named Charles 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:19.600 Ledger caught wind of the bark's medicinal properties in the 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:25.160 eighteen sixties. He traveled through Peru and Bolivia and with 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:29.320 the help of his servant, a native named Manuel Incra Mammani, 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:33.440 he stole seeds, smuggled them to Europe and sold them 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:38.040 to the Dutch. The production and study of quinine soon exploded. 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:43.520 It would save millions of lives. And that is where 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:46.360 the ethics of biopiracy gets sort of Harry. 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:49.920 It's a real gray area in a lot of ways. 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:53.800 There's always two sides of this biopiracy thing. I mean, 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:56.600 it's a sovereign nation, seems like it should have a 0:15:56.720 --> 0:15:59.960 right to the things that are found within its borders. 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:03.320 But then what the British Empire used when they were 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:07.560 taking the Tinjona tree for quini, and they said, well, look, 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:11.280 this is for the greater good of mankind. And that's 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:13.440 something that still is going. 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:16.760 On regardless of where you land on the issue of quinine. 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:21.280 This long history of biopiracy left many nations, especially those 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:25.600 in South America and Africa, feeling cheated, and it wouldn't 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:29.600 be addressed by the international stage until the early nineteen nineties. 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:33.720 In Rio de Chenaier you had a the nineteen ninety 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:37.680 two Earth Summit, the first summit that basically came up 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:41.080 with international regulations against biopiracy. 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:47.960 That year, an international treaty was signed, the rules for 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:51.040 which are pretty simple. If a country is home to 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:54.840 a genetic resource, for instance, a rare or unique plant 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:59.400 like rubber, then that country is entitled to benefit financially 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:04.240 from any profits when the plant is sold elsewhere. It's 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:07.560 essentially a thank you for keeping and protecting the plant 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:11.359 over the past few centuries. The same goes for a 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:16.199 traditional knowledge. If a pharmaceutical company learns about a plant's 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:21.439 medicinal benefits thanks to indigenous knowledge, then locals deserve some 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:25.800 financial compensation when the profits roll in. In other words, 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:33.520 it's about giving credit where credit is due. Despite these efforts, 0:17:33.880 --> 0:17:40.200 biopiracy remains what Jackson calls a rancrous issue, especially as 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:42.280 corporations get bigger and bigger. 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:47.240 You still have that kind of sovereign rights versus the 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:51.920 greater good, that kind of pushing pool that is part 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:55.240 of the argument, that's part of the exchange. People don't 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:58.320 really believe in empire right now, Government empires aren't so big, 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:01.200 but I mean private are a big deal. 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:05.680 In the US, corporations can patent a plant, new breeds 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:09.280 can be protected by intellectual property law, and this has 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:14.840 gotten some folks in trouble. In nineteen ninety five, the 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:19.320 US Patent Office granted scientists a patent for turmeric, also 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:22.439 known as kurkuma longa, because it could be used for 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:26.480 wound healing. Of course, over in India, locals had known 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:30.720 this for centuries, if not thousands of years. A couple 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:34.680 years later, a Texas company tried to patent basmati rice, 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:37.880 a decision that, to put it lightly, made a lot 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:42.480 of farmers in India very angry. And the treaty itself, 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:45.399 even though it's prevented a lot of exploitation and theft, 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:49.919 has its downsides because as it's gotten harder to export 0:18:50.040 --> 0:18:54.399 and study some plants, they've only gotten rarer and more endangered. 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:57.639 By the time I wrote a book and talked to 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:00.840 some dis botanists and then demoloed it would go down 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:03.600 to the Amazon and study these things. Is said. You 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:05.840 go down there and you're the villain. You don't know 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:08.560 whether or not you're going to be called a biopirate. 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:11.680 Even after you've jumped through all the hoops and paint 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:15.120 all of the fees at the airport, they might decide 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:19.760 that you're trying to steal from them, and they'll sequester 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:20.880 you for a long time. 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:23.080 All of you or specimens will die. 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:26.480 The ability to patent plants in the US has also 0:19:26.640 --> 0:19:34.200 made it a huge target of foreign biopirates. It's twenty 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:37.960 eleven and a field manager working at DuPont Pioneer is 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:41.360 peering across a cornfield when he notices an Asian man 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:44.879 crouched over a row of maize sifting through the dirt. 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:51.679 Now this isn't just any old cornfield. This is a 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:56.320 grower field, a place where agricultural companies test news strains 0:19:56.359 --> 0:19:59.480 of veggies, ones that could be more resistant to disease 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:04.000 and famine. In other words, exactly the kind of plants 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:08.520 a foreign nation might want to steal and replicate. The 0:20:08.600 --> 0:20:15.280 manager drives over to the visitor and confronts him. The 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:19.040 man named Mo looks startled. He explains he worked for 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:23.520 a university, but he doesn't go into any more detail. Instead, 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:30.600 he quickly gets in his car and speeds away, the 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:37.960 field manager notifies the FBI. Turns out the FBI is 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:42.160 already on Moe's tail. Mo Hi Loong has been sneaking 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:46.000 through the cornfields of Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa with a 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:50.719 crew of accomplices, stealing ears of corn, rooting up seedlings. 0:20:51.800 --> 0:20:55.960 The FBI discovers that Moe works for a Chinese agricultural company, 0:20:56.320 --> 0:21:01.239 and he's been targeting cornfields owned by American corporation. His 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:05.000 goal to unlock the trade secrets buried in the DNA 0:21:05.160 --> 0:21:09.720 of various new GMO corn. If he can steal the seeds, 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:14.120 his employer can reverse engineer the plant to skip years 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:19.359 of expensive biotech research required to create new strains. Mo 0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:22.200 and his accomplices would later be caught trying to ship 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:25.760 two hundred and fifty pounds of stolen corn seed to China, 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:30.800 hiding hundreds of small samples in envelopes of microwave popcorn. 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:35.080 The trade secrets hidden in those seeds were worth at 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:41.120 least thirty million dollars. After police caught up with him, 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:44.399 Mo would be sentenced to three years in prison, a 0:21:44.440 --> 0:21:48.639 pretty light sentence for a biopirate all things considered, because 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:51.719 remember that story about Charles Ledger, the guy who's sticky 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:55.240 fingers helped launch the world quinine biz. You may recall 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:58.320 he had help from a native, a guy named Manuel Kramamani. 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:03.119 While in Europe, Ledger was celebrated as a hero, but 0:22:03.200 --> 0:22:06.919 in gram Amani Back home, locals soon learned what he 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:12.560 had done, and he'd be arrested, beaten, tortured, and then killed. 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:18.080 The difference between a smuggler and a saint, between a 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:22.159 backstabber and a lifesaver, may merely depend on whether you 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:25.160 live in the nation that was pilfered or the one 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:29.280 that profited. But where there are people willing to kill 0:22:29.320 --> 0:22:32.399 for a plant, there are others who are willing to 0:22:32.480 --> 0:22:49.400 die for one. Their story when we return Leningrad nineteen 0:22:49.480 --> 0:22:54.080 forty three, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union with a plan. 0:22:54.840 --> 0:22:58.359 First they would surround Leningrad, Then they'd cut off the 0:22:58.400 --> 0:23:02.639 city's supply routes, and then finally they'd starved the population 0:23:02.760 --> 0:23:07.200 into submission. The goal, according to a high level memo, 0:23:07.480 --> 0:23:10.800 was to quote wipe Leningrad from the face of the earth. 0:23:12.080 --> 0:23:16.320 For months, Germans dropped bombs onto Leningrad's hospitals and homes. 0:23:16.880 --> 0:23:21.480 The Luftwaffa zeroed in on the food depots and markets. Meanwhile, 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:25.919 Axis troops looted the cities famously ornate palaces, transforming them 0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:33.440 into smoldering heaps of ash. Leningrad became a tomb. Michael Wahlzer, 0:23:33.720 --> 0:23:37.600 a political theorist, claims quote more civilians died in the 0:23:37.640 --> 0:23:43.480 Siege of Leningrad than in the modernists infernos of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, 0:23:43.520 --> 0:23:49.399 and Nagasaki taken together. But the Red Army punched back. 0:23:50.240 --> 0:23:53.520 Snipers lurked in the rubble, hid in the bell towers, 0:23:53.760 --> 0:23:58.640 and burrowed under bodies. A chorus of anti aircraft weapons 0:23:58.680 --> 0:24:03.360 boomed day and night. Millions of ordinary people who did 0:24:03.359 --> 0:24:07.480 not or could not evacuate, stretched their bread rations by 0:24:07.560 --> 0:24:12.480 substituting flour with sawdust, and in the center of town, 0:24:13.320 --> 0:24:16.680 a team of botanists made a decision that would change 0:24:16.760 --> 0:24:26.600 the course of world history forever. In nineteen forty three, 0:24:27.040 --> 0:24:31.280 Leningrad housed one of the world's largest seed banks. Established 0:24:31.280 --> 0:24:34.480 two decades earlier, the institute was at the forefront of 0:24:34.560 --> 0:24:37.560 a new type of botany. Not as a haven for 0:24:37.640 --> 0:24:41.159 biopirates or greedy monarchs, but a new botany for the 0:24:41.160 --> 0:24:45.399 good of the world. In Leningrad, scientists used a vast 0:24:45.440 --> 0:24:49.240 collection of seeds to study plant immunity, pathology, and cultivation. 0:24:50.119 --> 0:24:53.080 It was a library designed to preserve and protect the 0:24:53.119 --> 0:24:57.760 plant world's genetic story, a repository and intensive care unit 0:24:58.040 --> 0:25:01.440 for some of the planet's rarest and most endangered species. 0:25:03.400 --> 0:25:07.400 As the neighborhood around the institute crumbled, dozens of botanists 0:25:07.480 --> 0:25:11.040 working inside risked their lives to keep those seeds safe. 0:25:11.680 --> 0:25:14.639 But bombs and mortar fire were the least of the 0:25:14.640 --> 0:25:23.600 botanist's worries. Their greatest enemy was their own hunger. To 0:25:23.680 --> 0:25:28.000 preserve the seeds, the botanists had to keep the collections warm. 0:25:28.480 --> 0:25:32.480 With electricity destroyed and the brutal Russian winter barreling in, 0:25:33.400 --> 0:25:36.639 the scientists scoured the charred rubble of their beloved city, 0:25:37.080 --> 0:25:43.919 burning any scraps to keep the collection alive. Then the 0:25:43.960 --> 0:25:50.600 ice swept in. With the cold came mass starvation. Up 0:25:50.680 --> 0:25:55.840 to one hundred thousand people began dying every month. Even 0:25:55.880 --> 0:26:02.800 the rats began to show the rib cages inside the 0:26:02.840 --> 0:26:06.879 seed bank. The botanists, grappling with their own hunger, faced 0:26:06.880 --> 0:26:14.119 an unrelenting temptation. They had access to rice, wheat, peas, oats, corn, 0:26:14.600 --> 0:26:20.080 the work courses of agriculture, and yet each scientist, despite 0:26:20.119 --> 0:26:24.520 growing increasingly hungry, refused to tap into the collection to 0:26:24.600 --> 0:26:34.679 save themselves. One by one, the botanists starved. According to 0:26:34.720 --> 0:26:39.840 The Washington Post, the first was Alexander Stutkin, a peanut expert. 0:26:40.600 --> 0:26:44.720 He collapsed at his desk. Then it was the institute's 0:26:44.800 --> 0:26:50.680 rice specialist, and then another and another. Eating the seeds 0:26:50.880 --> 0:26:54.920 could have saved their lives, but each scientist had made 0:26:54.960 --> 0:26:58.840 a choice. They refused to grow or eat the seeds 0:26:59.119 --> 0:27:02.600 because doing so would have destroyed the future they had 0:27:02.640 --> 0:27:07.520 worked toward. The Siege of Leningrad lasted eight hundred and 0:27:07.600 --> 0:27:13.080 seventy two days. Over that time, at least nine botanists 0:27:13.280 --> 0:27:24.560 starved to death, but the seeds survived. Years later, those 0:27:24.640 --> 0:27:27.879 same seeds would be crossbread to produce crops used around 0:27:27.880 --> 0:27:32.000 the world today. You and I have definitely eaten food 0:27:32.359 --> 0:27:37.240 descended from those Leningrad seeds. In a world of biopirates, 0:27:37.600 --> 0:27:42.639 these botanists were something different. What journalist Boyce Rensburger called 0:27:42.880 --> 0:27:47.040 the first martyrs for biodiversity, and that's where we want 0:27:47.080 --> 0:27:51.080 to end this podcast by focusing not on the thieves, 0:27:51.240 --> 0:27:54.640 the crooks, and the corruption. We want to end by 0:27:54.680 --> 0:27:58.760 shining a light on the people making huge sacrifices right 0:27:58.800 --> 0:28:07.280 now to save us. In the nineteen forties, the Leningrad 0:28:07.320 --> 0:28:11.280 Seed Bank was a novelty, but today there are approximately 0:28:11.320 --> 0:28:14.040 seventeen hundred seed banks across the globe. 0:28:14.560 --> 0:28:18.119 My name's Eleanor Braman, and I work at the Millennium 0:28:18.160 --> 0:28:20.320 Seed Bank at the roeb Botanic Gardens Queue. 0:28:20.680 --> 0:28:24.560 The Millennium Seed Bank program is the largest conservation resource 0:28:24.640 --> 0:28:28.119 in the world. If there's any place to find hope 0:28:28.119 --> 0:28:29.680 in the future, it's here. 0:28:30.440 --> 0:28:34.560 Since two thousand, we've worked with ninety seven different countries 0:28:34.600 --> 0:28:39.280 and territories to help conserve their native flora. It sounds 0:28:39.320 --> 0:28:41.720 deceptively simple. You just say, well, you just go out 0:28:41.720 --> 0:28:44.080 and you collect some seeds, and then we dry them 0:28:44.080 --> 0:28:44.720 and freeze them. 0:28:45.280 --> 0:28:48.280 Of course, it's a little more involved than that. The 0:28:48.360 --> 0:28:51.280 Millennium Seed Bank is the kind of place that would 0:28:51.320 --> 0:28:53.360 make a Doomsday prepper drool. 0:28:53.840 --> 0:28:57.080 The vaulte underground is actually within half a meter thick 0:28:57.120 --> 0:29:00.760 reinforced concrete, so we're near an international air The idea 0:29:00.960 --> 0:29:03.680 was it could withstand a plane going down. We've also 0:29:03.720 --> 0:29:06.960 got radiation detection which would cut off a supply to 0:29:07.000 --> 0:29:09.880 the vault if radiation was detected, and we have a 0:29:09.920 --> 0:29:14.080 flood protection mechanism, and we have backup generators, and we 0:29:14.160 --> 0:29:15.560 have some solar power. 0:29:16.000 --> 0:29:21.040 And protected in these underground vaults are seeds. Lots and 0:29:21.200 --> 0:29:22.520 lots of seeds. 0:29:23.080 --> 0:29:26.680