Environmental Status
As native plants of Australia, all Byblis species are protected. Until the year 2000, they were also given international protection under CITES appendix II, but were removed from the list when Australia entered the CITES agreement. Since then trade of the genus has been unregulated outside of Australia. However, due the sensitivity of the plant, interest in the genus has been restricted to a small portion of the carnivorous plant hobbyist community. The majority of plant material sold today is produced in cultivation, with the annual B. filifolia and B. liniflora being the most common. Most of the other species must be grown from seed, which is often collected from the wild for this purpose.
The West Australian species B. gigantea und B. lamellata are being threatened by habitat destruction for urban sprawl from cities such as Perth. Particularly damaging is the draining of wet habitats to produce arable land. B. gigantea is on the Internation Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species and is considered critically endangered.
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