Ok, then. If this really matters for the survival of the population or not, depends on the context. When the plant seeds is dead already. Flowering starts a metabolical countdown that ends with the "suicide" of the entire plant.

He has part of a flowering stalk in the hand, not viable seeds there. Yes is bad, but... he could have good reasons to do it.

For example if he wants to pollinate a batch of cultured plants at the lab to assure to increase the genetical diversity but remaining purebreed. Scientists do this all the time.

Or he could want to maintain an herbarium because we need to assure that this is the only Ferula species in our breeding population, and this needs sampling the population and microscope.

Or to take a sample of the pollen to see if both plants are the same. Search for fossil pollen of Silphium in archaeological sites sounds like a reasonable idea to me.

Or to sample the chemicals to see if some could be useful, (would lead to the plant being cultured, propagated in mass and saved as economical resource).

Or to deliberately forbid the plant flowering when is small. To abort the dying countdown and potentiate vegetative grow (so the plant flower one year later with much, much more seeds in a bigger plant).

Of course could be just because... national geographic wanted a stupid photo

But before to start badmouthing anybody, we need to have all the context. As botanic, he can have solid reasons to remove part of a flower stalk in an endangered species. Governments grant special permits for scientific work covering exactly this things.

he had found how plant it in artificial environment, maybe can't work on recovery population but enough for this.