For those of you who live in a tropical country with interesting fruiting trees that are uncommon globally (e.g. we're not talking about mangoes and the like!
) and take a long time to reach maturity:
1) If someone wanted wanted to buy such an "exotic" (but non-endangered, not
locally-rare) tree of a reasonable size (e.g. no more than a few years away from fruiting size, ~2-6 meters tall) to export from your country - do you think that would be possible to find a seller who could get a phyto / export approval for it?
2) What if the tree had to be dug up (e.g. one doesn't expect to find most "exotic indigenous trees of nearly fruiting size" in pots) - would this impose any barriers?
3) With reasonable effort, do you think it would be possible to find someone in the area (or who would be willing to go to the area) who knows what they're doing re: digging up, rootball-wrapping, and transporting a tree? E.g. in the US or Europe you'd hire a professional tree mover who would show up with a spade truck (who will charge several hundred dollars plus transport costs). But even doing the whole process by hand is fine so long as the people doing so know what they're doing.
Total budget per tree (not just paying the owners, but also the movers, and for export costs, incl. shipping) would not be unlimited, but would be significant (thousands of dollars per tree, depending on tree size; for particularly large/spectacular trees, potentially up to $15k or so, maybe even more in exceptional cases), and if one tree was being sourced from a particular area, we'd probably try to source others as well (to combine shipping). Our government does not mandate bare-rooting, although non-bare-root trees have to have the phyto also certify the soil (and if it's a country that has the New Zealand flatworm, they either have to be bare-root or specifically note on the phyto that the flatworm is not found where the plant was acquired. I don't think it's found in any tropical countries.).
This is nothing at all urgent - just a longer-term consideration.
(Also, if you're not from a tropical country with interesting native trees, but know a bit about this topic, feel free to weigh in as well!)