…but we’re not going to force you to pay. We’re going to use the magical powers of logic to convince you that it’s worth the investment. Ready? Here goes:
If you contribute, say, R200/month and become a Maverick Insider member that works out to about R6.57 a day.
Why should you pay? Well, because we provide a service to you (the news) that you use regularly to stay informed. If you value that service, and would like to see us stick around to continue delivering that service, then we need our readers’ help. Our journalism has a huge impact in exposing corruption and demanding accountability. That is worth investing in.
If you want to see South Africa change for the better then sign up to Maverick Insider and let’s do it together.
Become an Insider Already an Insider? Click here to login
Already an Insider? Click here to login
There’s a 99.7% chance that this isn’t for you. Only 0.3% of our readers have responded to this call for action.
Those 0.3% of our readers are our hidden heroes, who are fuelling our work and impacting the lives of every South African in doing so. They’re the people who contribute to keep Daily Maverick free for all, including you.
We need so many more of our readers to join them. The equation is quite simple: the more members we have, the more reporting and investigations we can do, and the greater the impact on the country. We are inundated with tip-offs; we know where to look and what to do with the information when we have it – we just need the means to help us keep doing this work.
Be part of that 0.3%. Be a Maverick. Be a Maverick Insider.
CapeNature ranger Hilton Bocks bends down to point out a tiny succulent, one of many spread over the stony plains of the Knersvlakte Nature Reserve on the West Coast. The pebbles crunch under our shoes as we walk around.
“This one is endemic,” says Bocks. “It’s young. I’m guessing five to six years. They take very long to grow in this area.”
The plant, which GroundUp agreed not to name, has been listed as rare. It is one of the succulents, found only in this area, that are being poached to extinction by syndicates linked to the international illegal market.
Bocks points out another tiny succulent. This one, he says, is probably 50 years old.
The arid 90,000-hectare Knersvlakte Nature Reserve is home to some of the world’s rarest dwarf succulent plants, usually less than 10cm high, often only a few millimetres above ground. The Knersvlakte is a small part of the Succulent Karoo — a diverse biome which is home to more than 6,000 plant species – which stretches from Namibia, through the Richtersveld and the Northern Cape, to the little Karoo in the Western Cape.
According to the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), there are about 2,500 types of succulents endemic to the area in the Succulent Karoo. SANBI estimates that more than 1.5 million of these dwarf succulents have been removed from the wild over the last three years. Many of these plants have been red-listed .
Endangered plants are protected by national and provincial legislation. In the Western Cape, it’s illegal to harvest, be in possession of, or sell endangered plants without a permit – even if you are the owner of the land where these plants grow. In the Northern Cape, it’s illegal to take endangered species out of the province without a permit.
The illegal trade in these plants is increasing at an alarming speed. According to SANBI, in the past three years, the number of plants confiscated from poachers by the South African Police Service has increased annually by over 250%. By November last year, police had confiscated about 415,000 plants.
SANBI spokesperson Nontsikelelo Mpulo says the number of poached plants is probably far higher because monitoring and enforcement in vast Northern Cape landscapes is challenging. “We suspect that less than 25% of the trade is intercepted by law enforcers. It’s likely that over 1.5 million plants have been removed from the wild in the past three years,” says Mpulo.
GroundUp spoke to a resident of Springbok, who said he was not a poacher himself but had seriously considered it. He said poaching in the area was a consequence of high unemployment rates. Latest statistics show that nearly one in two adults in the Northern Cape are unemployed.
“Many people are doing it out of desperation,” said the resident. He said that local poachers, who took the real risks when transporting the plants from the Northern Cape to Cape Town, were being exploited by the “middlemen” and buyers.
He said prices range from R30 to R100 at most per plant, and poaching is driven by the illicit market. “We wouldn’t even have been interested in these things,” he said.
Police estimate that the market value of these plants is high, but figures are hard to come by.
On 1 February 2022 police arrested a man at a roadblock close to Springbok after Captain Karel du Toit of the Springbok Stock Theft and Endangered Species Unit recovered a large black bag from bushes next to the road. The bag, filled with small succulent plants, was apparently thrown from the suspect’s car window. An officer at the scene said it looked like Conophytums, a rare species that is currently in high demand. There were more than 5,500 plants in the bag.
The police said roadblocks frequently result in arrests. Confiscations usually range between a few thousand and sometimes up to 20,000 plants.
Poachers are more active during the night, said Du Toit. “The poachers know that the roads are not manned at night.”
He said poachers used to come from Asia to South Africa to poach the plants themselves, and some were arrested. But when the Covid lockdown started, they couldn’t come to the country anymore and began to rope in locals to do the poaching. Now, mostly locals are arrested.
In 2021, police dealt with 60 cases involving 130 suspects. “Certainly it will be more this year,” said Du Toit.
The plants which are recovered cannot easily be replanted, says Bocks. The exact location from where they were poached is not always known and because of the difficult conditions, plants may not survive once replanted.
Growing the succulents from seed is not easy either, said Christine Wiese, manager of the Kokerboom nursery in Vanrhynsdorp, close to the Knersvlakte. The nursery specialises in indigenous succulent types and sells seeds overseas, including to Asian markets.
But the plants take a long time to grow from seed. It may take five to seven years, even longer, for a succulent to get big enough to sell, making the poaching of full-grown plants a more lucrative option.
Katherine Forsythe, the Succulent Karoo Project Coordinator at World Wide Fund for Nature (WFF) South Africa, said WWF was working with SANBI on ways to stop the illegal trade.
The term “poaching” puts all the attention on the people doing it on the ground, she said, while the illegal trade in succulents involves many roleplayers – from people on the ground, middlemen and criminal elements, all the way to the end user.
“We want to draw attention to the whole trade, rather than just one element of it,” said Forsythe.
The resident GroundUp spoke to in Springbok suggested that instead of poaching, the community could start cultivating the plants and sell them legally to make an income. “If we can cultivate them, then we can protect them too. Then they don’t have to go extinct.” DM
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
by Liezl Human for GroundUp, Daily Maverick March 7, 2022
This <a target="_blank" href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-03-07-northern-capes-rare-succulents-are-being-stolen-for-the-international-illegal-market/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za">Daily Maverick</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/favicon.png?w=97" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;"><img src="https://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&tid=UA-10686674-10&cid=1&t=event&ec=third-party&ea=view&el=1&cs=OBP&cm=tag&cn=article&dp=northern-capes-rare-succulents-are-being-stolen-for-the-international-illegal-market&post=1198541&dt=Northern%20Cape’s%20rare%20succulents%20are%20being%20stolen%20for%20the%20international%20illegal%20market" style="width:1px;height:1px;">
Please note you must be a Maverick Insider to comment. Sign up here or sign in if you are already an Insider.
Everybody has an opinion but not everyone has the knowledge and the experience to contribute meaningfully to a discussion. That’s what we want from our members. Help us learn with your expertise and insights on articles that we publish. We encourage different, respectful viewpoints to further our understanding of the world. View our comments policy here.
When your goverment does not create work and jobs for the people, this is what happens
To see these plants growing in their amazing habitat is a privelege, to see the holes left when they are ripped from the ground is heartbreaking. And to know those thousands of plants found in black bags from poachers will probably never grow ago is to feel deep anger and anguish.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Daily Maverick © All rights reserved
There are many great benefits to being a Maverick Insider. Removing advertising from your browsing experience is one of them - we don't just block ads, we redesign our pages to look smarter and load faster.
Click here to see other benefits and to sign-up to our reader community supporting quality, independent journalism.
Select which newsletters you'd like to receive