South Africa’s succulent plants threatened by poachers in the Karoo

A biodiversity hotspot in a remote part of South Africa has become the center of an illegal trade in protected plant species, with organized crime groups capitalizing on foreign demand.

“Not only have they stolen our land or our plants, they have also stolen our heritage,” an angry rancher tells the BBC, expressing her dismay at the social and ecological crisis that poaching has caused.

Most of the plants in question are a variety known as succulents, named for their ability to retain water and survive in arid climates.

Many of the world’s succulent species are only found in the Succulent Karoo Desert, which spans South Africa and Namibia.

Succulent species vary in size, shape and color: some look like small multicolored buttons and others look like cacti, from which colorful flowers sprout at certain times of the year.

While these varieties can be grown in nurseries, global demand is also fueling poaching of these wild plants which are then smuggled and sold online to buyers in the United States, Europe and East Asia.

In Kamieskroon, a small town in the center of South Africa’s Namaqualand region, the hills have become a haven for poachers.

Some of the species are very localized and therefore can disappear with a small amount of poaching.

“In South Africa we already know of seven species that have been completely exterminated and there are surely more species that will become extinct very soon,” says Pieter van Wyk, nursery curator at the /Ai /Ais-Richtersveld Transfrontier Park.

It’s difficult to get figures on how many plants are being poached, but the non-governmental organization Traffic reports that 1.6 million illegally collected succulents were seized by South African law enforcement agencies between 2019 and 2024. This only represents smuggling that was detected, so the true figure is likely to be much higher.

The South African government is well aware of the problem and in 2022 unveiled a strategy to combat poaching. It includes the implementation of community programs on the need to protect the environment.

According to Van Wyk and other conservationists, plant poaching has increased since the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020.

Since international traders could not travel to South Africa during that time, they turned to local people to collect succulents and ship them out of the country.

Van Wyk says this coincided with an increase in global demand.

“People had more time to try to find something to keep themselves busy, and plants were one of the only things in your house that could connect you to the outside world.”

This has been exploited by organized crime syndicates who hire teams of plant poachers and then market the wild plants on social media and e-commerce platforms.

“The unions saw this as an opportunity to do something viral…to say to the widest possible audience, ‘We have this super weird-looking thing coming from the African continent,'” Van Wyk says.

“Then the public loses its mind and says, ‘I want to buy one,’ and (the unions) organize poaching of the species,” he adds.

The uptick in organized crime activity in the region is having knock-on effects on local communities.

“This is a low-income area, people are not rich and people will take advantage of opportunities to earn an income,” explains Malinda Gardiner of Conservation South Africa.

Expressing a similar opinion, the rancher the BBC spoke to says there is always an influx of money into his community when poaching occurs.

“When we see young people going up to the mountainous areas, we know they are poachers,” adds the farmer, who asks not to be identified for fear of reprisals.

“They use screwdrivers to uproot the succulents and carry backpacks and sacks to store the stolen plants.”

A few days later, there is an outbreak of excessive drinking and illegal activity.

“When they get the money, there are more drugs, more alcohol, the children are abandoned because mom and dad are drunk and there is no food,” Gardiner adds.

He worries that the tensions will have long-term effects.

“Small communities here really need each other… but this creates distrust. It also creates division in communities,” he says.

Mr Van Wyk’s assessment is starker: “People are being abused and enslaved by unions and buyers.”

An attempt is being made to educate buyers about the importance of understanding the origin of a plant.

China has become a major source of demand for wild succulents in recent years, but an Internet campaign to educate people about the illegal succulent trade has yielded some results.

The Clean Internet for Conophytum campaign was launched in March 2023 by the China Foundation for Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development.

According to Linda Wong, deputy general secretary of the foundation, there has been an 80% reduction in online advertisements for conophytum, a type of succulent, of unknown origin, and buyers are beginning to wonder where the plants sold online come from. .

“The key is awareness. Once people know, they want to act. They want to take responsibility for consuming those plants and enjoying their beauty in a very responsible way,” he tells the BBC.

Conservationists advise customers around the world to ask about the origin of a plant and under no circumstances buy those advertised as wild.

UK’s Traffic and Kew Gardens recently announced they would be partnering with eBay develop new ways to prevent the sale of wild succulents on your platform.

In South Africa, Van Wyk says more must be done to promote the cultivation of succulents that can be grown and harvested legally, to reduce demand from poaching.

“We as a country need to say: ‘We have this resource and there are other countries that are benefiting hugely from it, why not us?'” he tells the BBC.

Van Wyk now runs a nursery in the /Ai /Ais-Richtersveld Transfrontier Park that cares for plants that have been confiscated by law enforcement, and says they have received more than 200,000 so far.

“It’s obviously stressful to see things disappear. But if you study these plants, it gives you so much joy and pleasure that you forget about all the nonsense that’s happening in the world,” says Van Wyk.