During the 16th session of the CITES conference, it was decided to to remove T. sucrei, T. kautskyi, and T. sprengeliana from CITES (Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species) Appendix II. This removes the restrictions on international trade of these Brazilian species.
At the 8th meeting held In 1992, there was a proposal to list the entire genus of Tillandsia. This was unprecedented, as no other genus, in its entirety, had been listed before. The reasoning was "that it was too difficult to tell one species from another". I worked very closely with Harry Luther and the US representative to the Plants Committee to educate many of the nations representatives about the differences of the species, and recommended a short list of some that were possibly threatened. This list was expanded to include seven species, T. sucrei, T. kautskyi, T. sprengeliana, T. harrisii, T. mauryana, T. xerographica and T. kammii. Today the first three are removed leaving the last four species on CITES.