THE search for a leading Scottish botanist missing for nearly six weeks in the Vietnamese jungle while on plant-hunting expedition has been hampered by freak snowfalls.
Jamie Taggart, 48, from Cove, who is head of the Linn Botanic Garden in Dunbartonshire - founded by his father Dr Jim Taggart in 1971 - was last seen on October 31 leaving his guest house, heading towards an area overlooked by the highest peak in Indochina, the 10,312ft Mount Fansipan.
He had been planning to chronicle plants at high altitude on his second visit to the area in two years. Up to a foot of snow covered the North Vietnamese peaks which is expected to melt quickly and create further problems for search parties. Mr Taggart was identified by traders at the road-end where he was dropped off.
Mr Taggart's friend Ian Sinclair, 60, of Crieff, Perthshire, has been co-ordinating the search from this country while teams have been scouring Hoang Lien National Park in the Sapa district of the Lao Cai Province.
He added: "The traders confirmed the direction he headed off on. A meeting is being arranged with the vice-director of the National Park Authorities. This meeting is to involve greatly expanding the search party and involve the forest rangers and botanical workers."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article