For the first 25 years of its existence, the ICPS was almost exclusively devoted to horticulture. It helped the sparsely strewn network of carnivorous plant growers communicate. Conservation was considered a laudable concept, but was not one in which the ICPS actively participated.

Within the last five years, however, much has changed.

The internet (and especially the carnivorous plant listserve developed by ICPS board members, and the ICPS Web Ring) now supplies channels of communication that the ICPS could once provide only through its journal. Meanwhile the threats stressing populations of carnivorous plants have reached critical levels...

• In the USA, approximately 95% of the carnivorous plant wetland habitat has been irreversibly developed by humans.
• In Europe, vast moors and wetlands once filled with carnivorous sundews and waterwheel plants have been drained or degraded by agricultural run-off.
• In southeast Asia, slash and burn agriculture is destroying remnant pitcher plant habitat.
• In western Australia, human development is eradicating delicate pygmy and tuberous sundews.

The ICPS membership can no longer afford to ignore these threats to carnivorous plants, so the ICPS has become actively engaged in conservation. A number of our projects and activities are listed in the projects area. Look, read, and help us in our work.