Happy Nice Mall

STEINKOPF, South Africa — On a moonless night in South Africa’s westernmost desert, Avrill Kaffer had just sold out when vehicles with flashing lights appeared out of the dark and an officer from the Stock Theft and Endangered Species Unit jumped in. He ordered her to descend to the ground from behind a nearby bush.

Kaffer was already handcuffed when he realized he was being set up. As he watched, the cops began to open the eight large cardboard boxes he had brought with him.

Inside they found thousands of small, brown, dumpling-like plants—Conophytums native to this part of Africa—apparently just dug up.

Conophytum, a genus of flowering plants consisting of more than 100 species — including several listed as endangered – experts said they are the latest victims of a global wave of succulent poaching caused by increased demand from collectors and enthusiasts around the world.

South Africa is home to about a third of all succulent species, according to the World Wildlife Fund, and experts say this wave of poaching poses a serious threat to biodiversity.

“Conofits are a big thing now,” said Captain Karel Du Toit, the officer behind the sting operation that led to Mr Kaffer’s arrest. Captain Du Toit, an avid Conophytum fan himself, said he spends most of his time investigating stolen livestock, but since 2018, tackling succulent poaching has become a full-time job.

“Eighty percent of these are factory cases,” he said in his office, pointing to a pile of case files on the floor next to his desk. “The problem is growing.”

Once thought of as plants for the poor in South Africa, succulents have become internationally fashionable in recent years, gaining value for their quirky, sculptural forms and relatively low maintenance requirements. A search for #succulents now brings in more than 12 million hits on Instagram.

The COVID-19 pandemic has bolstered an already vibrant houseplant industry, with garden centers reporting a sharp increase in indoor plant sales since lockdowns were first implemented in many countries in 2020.

Law enforcement officials said the pandemic has also changed the way meat poachers work. A few years ago, nearly all of the people arrested by Captain Du Toit and his colleagues were foreign nationals – especially Chinese and Korean passport holders. But as the pandemic pushes travel restrictions, foreign buyers are recruiting locals to poach.

“They provide GPS readings to the local population for the spots where the plants are growing,” said Captain Du Toit.

This shift has confronted the country’s conservation authorities with a growing number of young, unemployed people who see a chance to escape crushing poverty in these facilities.

“This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,” said Mr. Kaffer after he was arrested, counting the Conophytums he was trying to sell as the two officers shoveled them into evidence bags. There were 1,424 plants in the first box alone.

Mr Kaffer had expected to receive 160,000 rand, about $11,000, for his mills, but Captain Du Toit said their overseas market value would be much higher.

Mr Kaffer, 40, a former diamond miner, said he had been unemployed for over a year and was struggling to support his family. South Africa’s unemployment rate rose to almost 33 percent during the pandemic.

Typically, convicts are presented with a choice between paying a fine and receiving a suspended sentence or alternatively a short prison sentence.

Botanists are struggling to cope with the massive flow of succulents confiscated from poachers in botanical gardens and greenhouses in the Northern Cape and Western Cape states, where the poaching epidemic is most severe. Too many to replant in the wild, and with the risk of doing so contaminating remaining wild populations, authorities now hope to keep as many creatures alive as possible until a long-term decision can be made on what to do with them.

“I literally have case after case,” said a botanist who helped care for seized succulents in Cape Town and served as an expert witness for prosecutors. The man asked to remain anonymous, citing recent threats received by a colleague.

At the storage facility, which he says receives about 2,500 boiled Conophytums a week since the beginning of the year, trays of succulents lie along a series of metal tables, each section corresponding to a different bust of a policeman.

One table had a mix of haworthias, adromischus and gasteria, other succulents seized from a pair of Czech poachers in 2019. Alongside this were trays of Conophytum confiscated from a Korean poacher who turned out to be on the run from authorities in California. where he was accused of stealing more than half a million dollars of Dudleya farinosa plants.

“These got stuck in the mail,” the botanist said, pointing to several boxes of miniature Conophytum comptonii plants. “It’s just insane, people can’t get the plants fast enough.”

Stopping the tide of poaching is a big challenge. The South African government lacks the staff to oversee the wide open areas where Conophytums grow. Also, plant crime experts admit that few police or customs officers can even identify a Conophytum, far from distinguishing a grown nursery from a wild-harvested one.

Should wild populations disappear, the National Institute of Biodiversity of South Africa aims to collect stock samples of rare species to continue cultivation.

“Demand for rare, wild-harvested plants is growing rapidly, and many of these species, particularly Conophytums, occur only in very small local populations, so they can be collected by poachers to vanish within a few visits,” said İsmail Ebrahim, a project. Director of the Institute.

Plant trafficking is not a new phenomenon. However, South African scientist Carly Cowell, who now works at the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in England, said the internet, which is involved in a recent project that uses artificial intelligence to monitor the illegal online plant trade, has completely opened up the market.

“The internet is a big, big game changer,” he said. “We’ve seen a huge online trade in herbs.” “People are pretty ignorant or naive about what constitutes the illegal herb trade,” he said, noting that most buyers of illegally harvested plants don’t seem to know they’re breaking the law.

A recent study by the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, an international treaty organization that combats the illegal wildlife trade, found that there are about 365 endangered medicinal plants sold openly on Amazon and eBay.

Dr. Cowell said a phenomenon known as “plant blindness” complicates the problem — man’s tendency to view plants as inherently less important than animals.

Michelle Pfab, an official at South Africa’s biodiversity institute, said many nonprofit groups focus on endangered animals because it’s easier to raise funds for “charismatic” species.

“You use images of orphans and cute babies and it’s very easy to get donations,” she said. “It’s very difficult to do that with plants.”

Ms. Pfab said that while the number of poaching arrests is increasing, she is disappointed that few of the key players have been arrested.

“The ones caught are mostly the infantry, the poor trying to put food on the table,” he said.

He argues that South Africa will struggle to contain the wave of poaching until the requested species is more readily available from legal sources such as nurseries. This may take time.

“If you start from scratch with a pack of seeds, you won’t make a dime for four or five years,” said Minette Schwegmann, owner of a large succulent nursery in Robertson, east of Cape Town.

Ms. Schwegmann said she regularly receives orders for tens of thousands of mature Conophytums. When she says she can’t source these quantities from her nursery, some potential buyers ask why she can’t dig them into the wild.