There is a learning curve for all when first venturing out in the wild to collect their first prize. Failure is part of the learning process and is a realistic expectation even for a person who has boned up on technique. I think there are very few that can raise there hand and say I didn't screw the pooch when I collected my first few yamadori. I found experience is the best teacher.
True, but must this experience be gained on 100 year or older trees? I personally have a few wonderfully twisted Jack Pines with incredible trunks marked in my GPS, yet over the last three years I have only collected younger trees and saplings from the area. Why? I am learning about the species, how they react and how they recover. I have lost some trees but the ones I have lost are young, easily replaced. The experience I have gained will help assure the survival of the ones not so easily replaced....that is how one gains experience,. If you want to be a boxer, you don't fight your first fight with the champ or it'll likely be your last.
Gold Rush?...What gold rush? More imported and nursery material are sold than yamadori. For no other reason than there is more of it. Walk into any "bonsai nursery" Bonsai west, New England Bonsai, Royal Gardens and the amount of nursery stock far over shadows yamadori material. If you use the forums as a cross section of the bonsai community the amount of yamadori is a small fraction of the total amount of material offered.
As far as private collection goes, you are using a pretty wide brush stroke with some of these statements. A yamadori with true "potential' are not found by the thousands but by possibly the hundreds. Thats what makes them rare, not the fact that they were found living outside a container.
I am sure someone in the past said the exact same thing in Japan. Once the quality trees were depleted, anything that could be collected was, many were collected just to put in the ground at nurseries.
Based on your statements so far its wrong for the private collector to pursue yamadori because they will be killed by the thousands. It is also wrong for the experienced professional to collect by the hundreds even though they will live. So if you had to choose a lesser of two theoretical evils which one would it be, 100s that are alive or 1000s that are dead. You don't get to choose both
I would choose regulation, permits and limits, the same methods used to protect our other resources. When I bow hunt here in Michigan I buy a license that allows me two deer. When I take one I have to tag it with one of two tags I get. Sure there are and always will be poachers, but the fines are hard and heavy if you get caught. When I bow hunt in Canada, the system is the same, but I pay more for not being a resident.
This will happen with trees sooner or later, once enough people steal trees, leave unfilled holes and garbage behind, and people start noticing the market for such...a bad name will be given to us and fights will start along the lines of the ORV fights. When trees that hikers and outdoorsmen have enjoyed for years suddenly disappear, someone will take notice.
It is not the ethical collector or business that concerns me, it is the unethical collectors that do, again read the forums, there are far more than most would like to believe, and these are just the ones who admit it.
This comparing apples to oranges in a way. Don't get me wrong I am all for conserving our resources.
However.......
In Japan's culture almost every man, woman, and child participated in one form or another when it came to bonsai. This is a far cry from the participation here in the states where the bonsai community makes up a minute fraction of the US population. Land mass size between the two countries is quite different to say the least. So the ratio of people collecting in relationship to land mass here and in Japan in there hay day is night and day. Also Japan did not also deplete their yamadori in a decade it took much longer than that, centuries in fact with a population that was all consumed by bonsai culture.
Given our history of exploitation, I would place my money on the thought that as soon as more people realize that a tree they can get for next to nothing can be sold for hundreds or even thousands of dollars, tree poachers will abound. Just read the forums and see all the justifications given for collecting without permission, and these are for saplings and seedlings! Killing a few here and there won't bother them, if 10 out of 20 die, they'll just collect 40 next time.
Japan had a different culture then, today you can read stories about trees that were sawed off and potted and sold at a market there....it's a different world now then it was when Japan depleted its resources. What took centuries there can take decades or less here.
Commercial enterprises that legally sell any type of trees "full time" as a primary source of income have to be licensed. While I would be first in line to replenish the natural resource it is discouraged by the USDA and EPA. There reasoning as I understand it is, that there would be no control over such reforestation and that unsuitable cultivators of a species could be planted. This is a common statement made when one offers to replace what they took from a national park or state park as part of the negotiating deal to get in or get a permit.
Fees and licenses to collect, on top of business license would create funds for this type of replacement. But the sad fact is, once a 200 year old tree is collected, surviving or not, it is gone from the environment forever. We must consider this when collecting.
Before seedlings planted ever have a chance to become 200 + year old yamadori, all of us and most of our bonsai will be gone, and possibly most of the wild collectible trees as well. What will be left? Some jerk somewhere in some other country may be saying look what happened with America and all the wonderful yamadori they once had.
All I am saying is that education and respect for nature must come before the need to have a collected tree or for the need to use these wonders as a means of income. We shouldn't encourage beginners to collect trees, we shouldn't discourage other sources of stock to learn on, and we should take our resources seriously and assure that responsible collecting is done and this is accomplished best by being there.
Lastly, the logging argument has never held water with me, trees we look for are not logged and often do not grow where logging takes place or they would not be here today.
