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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

Not really. Apparently folks can order these seeds already? So its happening, notice or no notice. It seems inevitable that seeds of every plant will be in gardens of every conceivable corner of the earth.

Starting in the 1700's with botanists traveling the world to collect and disseminate them. Which gave us modern corn, wheat, flowering plants, grasses, succulents and nearly everything we grow, harvest and appreciate today. May be a little late to start being concerned about this.

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It seems inevitable that seeds of every plant will be in gardens of every conceivable corner of the earth.

Not inevitable at all. Try arriving in Australia with a piece of fruit in your hand luggage, or try arriving in New Zealand with mud on your walking boots, and see what happens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosecurity_in_Australia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosecurity_in_New_Zealand

Not for rich people flying on thier own planes. They don't seem to get inspected.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-36052243

I actually arrived in New Zealand with mud under my walking boots once - we had been trecking on Rarotonga, Cook Islands the day before, and I had not read the customs rules for NZ before filling in the paper slip, shortly before getting off the plane (if I remember correctly, it was approximately 10 years ago) - I had to wash the soles in a shallow tub with some sort of squishy pillow in it.

Try ordering seeds thru Amazon? Who's looking at that?

I ordered some seeds off Amazon from what I thought was a local seller for a regional plant.

The seeds arrived months later, well after planting season, from Kazakhstan. The customs declaration called them plastic beads, but they were definitely seeds. I destroyed them, because I couldn't know for sure they really were what they said they were - seems unlikely a niche regional American plant would be available in Kazakhstan.

Would Australia really be able to stop these cases where they lie on the customs form?

It sounds like you have less than a passing familiarity with the issue. We have a better understanding of the dangers of invasives and a better regulatory framework to control them than we did in the 1700s. We have eradication programs trying to limit or stop the spread of some of the worst species. Most of them are not beneficial crops.

Maybe a little too soon to just give up completely?

After 2 centuries of indiscriminate replanting? I seem to have a better grasp than most on this topic.

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