News of the week

Plant poaching on the increase. Protecting voles in California and salamanders in Texas

Aug 20, 2021

Plant poaching increases due to Covid-19 and the internet

Poaching is worldwide and insidious. Folks might see it happening right in front of their eyes, and, unless they see the carcasses of elephants with their trunks removed, have little idea that it is going on. The thing to remember is that nobody poaches crows or field mice. Poachers seek out the rare and hard to find, jeopardizing the existence of rare and endangered species.

For most of us, when we think of poaching, ivory comes to mind, but a great deal of poaching is of plants. The recent uptick in demand for rare succulents is blamed on a social media houseplant craze and the Covid-19 pandemic. With more time at home, people want to spruce up their surroundings, and houseplants are one way of doing that. Some plant sellers in the U.K say that their sales have increased fivefold since the start of the pandemic. The pandemic has also left people out of work. Many of the unemployed resort to poaching to earn some money.

Poaching in South Africa

South Africa is home to the fynbos shrubland, one of the most biologically diverse regions of the world, so much so that Table Mountain, the promontory at one end of Cape Town, has more biodiversity than the entire British Isles. The plants of the fynbos are evergreen or succulents, usually with overwhelmingly showy flowers, which makes them targets for illegal plant traders and makes South Africa one of the African continent’s top destination for plant poachers. South African botanists fear that poaching could wipe out some rare and endangered species. Dr. Cornelia Klak of the Biological Sciences Department at the University of Cape Town says:

The Asian market for these plants is insatiable. It is gigantic. There is a collecting mania. People want these wild plants which can grow for up to a hundred years. They are being taken out by local people, some of whom have lost jobs throughout lockdown. They are cleaning out the populations, including all the very, very old plants. This is the tragedy. They are not just picking off the seeds.

South Africa’s fynbos is a target for poachers, but they are also poaching plants in the deserts of South Africa.

Poaching in California

The coastal sage scrub and chaparral biomes of California can produce lovely and intriguing succulents. Among the most interesting are dudleya, which have fleshy leaves and grow long, curvy flowering stalks. In recent years they have become the target of poaching because of the expanding Asian market in succulents.

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Dudleya that grow along California’s central and northern coasts have become the ones most sought by illegal traders. The thievery, in numbers, can be surprisingly large. In October 2018, three South Koreans were caught with more than 2000 dudleya, which they had uprooted from several state parks. (Volunteers later replanted most of the confiscated dudleya.) In 2019, Adrian Foss, a captain with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the Sonoma County Press Democrat that investigators believe that over the past several years several hundreds of thousands of dudleyas have been uprooted from the bluffs along the northern California coast. In some areas, dudleya have been completely stripped from the landscape. Besides the harm done to the individual species, poachers cause further harm by trampling sensitive landscapes and disrupting the balance that exists between plants and pollinators.

Giant chalk dudleya. People love it so much they might kill it off. Photo: World of Succulents worldofsucculents.com

Ironically, while dudleya are easily grown in nurseries from seed, in Asia large, old dudleya are prized, and imperfections from the elements increase their value. Digging up California succulents and transplanting them thousands of miles away in Asia may all be for naught, too. The plants are adapted to the semiarid environment of coastal California. Though they may have survived for decades, once they are replanted in Asia, they may not live long, as they are unable to withstand the more humid climates to be found there.

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In January of this year, California Assembly Member Chris Ward introduced AB 223, which updated existing anti-poaching law with stiffer penalties for those convicted of illegally taking protected plants from the ground. The law is currently stalled in committee.

Other news

Brief synopses of environmental news of the past week. For more details, click the links.

Lawsuit to protect the Amargosa vole

The Center For Biological Diversity is suing the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for their failure to protect critical habitat for the Amargosa vole, a remarkably cute, short-tailed, mouse-like rodent that lives only in select habitats of the Amargosa Valley in California.

Discovered in 1900 and thought to be extinct until rediscovered in the 1930s, the Amargosa vole was listed as Endangered by the state of California in the 1980s. The US Fish & Wildlife Service listed the vole as Endangered in 1984. Their numbers have plummeted to under 100 individuals in certain years.

The cutest thing ever, an amargosa vole. Photo: High Country News hcn.org...

The voles rely on water from natural hot springs for their survival. Decades of groundwater pumping has disrupted these habitats. More and more people visit these hot springs for recreation, further jeopardizing the voles’ habitat.

The lawsuit claims that the government agencies are failing to analyze the harm caused by the hot spring tourists and excessive groundwater pumping. (Center For Biological Diversity)

Habitat protected for two salamanders

This week, the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service designated 1,315 acres of habitat in the Austin, Texas area as critical habitat for the Georgetown salamander and Salado salamander. The Georgetown salamander will receive 732 acres of protected habitat, and 583 acres will be protected for the Salado salamander. (Center For Biological Diversity)

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