That's unfortunate. I'd guess we've all known someone who was indiscriminately collecting species with a frivolous intent. The impulsive and immediate nature of social media aids this. Internet disinhibition of a sort. Many years ago, not quite pre-Web, but, y'know, dial-up and wonky time consuming connections, I went out with a native plants group to rescue some native orchids (Habenaria spp. of some sort) from an airport expansion area with the bulldozers already on site. They used a "phone tree" to notify regularly interested field trip people. Without us, there would have been 100% loss of the samples from that site, but even with us only a dozen or so were saved for wilderness preserves. About the same number were taken by individuals for home use, or even sale if they wished. While everything was legitimate, I wonder if any of them survived and propagated. It might just have been the wetlands habitat loss that prompted that trip and not any real endangerment. I picked a slipper orchid (Cyprepedium spp.) when I was a toddler and still remember the scolding I got. It didn't put me off of plants, and later digging and transplanting them, but I think I grasped the message of conservation a bit early in life.
