They can now only be seen in private gardens that encompass one or two trees from the forest where the species used to grow. Its entire habitat around Rio de Janeiro has disappeared. One species called epiphyte cactus, which, oddly enough, looks like mistletoe, used to live on trees in Brazil. Some cacti are already likely extinct in the wild. “Twenty-five percent of mammals are endangered.” “We didn’t expect them to be more threatened than mammals, for example,” she says.
#A tale in the desert 2016 license
Photo © The Ruth Bancroft Garden / Flickr through a Creative Commons license The paper details how 31 percent of the world’s cacti are currently threatened with extinction. Goettsch is also the lead author on a recent paper, “ High proportion of cactus species threatened with extinction,” published in the journal Nature Plants. She studies cacti with such passion her pseudonym is “greatcactus.” The world’s cacti experts have categorized about 1,500 various species, though more are still being discovered, says Barbara Goettsch, a Mexican scientist who is co-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Cactus and Succulent Plant Specialist Group. and northern Mexico, but unlikely places like Florida, Cuba and Ontario host their own unique species. The bulk of them do grow in the southwest U.S. And contrary to popular belief, they grow across the continent from east to west, as far north as Canada and down to Argentina. To start, cacti are only native to North and South America (with the exception of one species found in South Africa, Madagascar and Sri Lanka). The National Parks have a lot of things to take care of and cacti poaching is one of them, but do you have the resources to patrol the areas? It’s tough.” Endangered Cactiīefore unravelling the tale of Russian cacti smugglers, here is a quick lesson on cacti botany. If they’re in National Parks, we do the investigation. “Some of these cacti are in the middle of nowhere. “I think when you look at the geography of the area and the amount of resources we have, every day is an uphill battle,” Chavez says. GuerreroĪgents like Chavez and others in North America do what they can to prevent, or catch, the smugglers, but it’s a struggle in the vast expanse of the uninhabited southwestern U.S. The case, which moved partially through federal courts in Los Angeles in 2015, and is still ongoing today, helps illuminate a greater problem with North America’s public lands, flora and fauna.Ī recent study showed more than 30 percent of the world’s cacti are threatened or endangered, and many of those because of illegal collecting. “It means they collected or over collected it, and the collectors have taken it completely out of the wild.” “They knew they were there before,” Chavez says. The men had reportedly been looking for the rarest and most endangered plants, the appendix one cacti, but ultimately couldn’t find them despite GPS coordinates pinpointing exact locations. Some of the cacti they had were labeled appendix two, which means they aren’t currently “threatened with extinction but may become so unless trade is closely controlled,” according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. They were smuggling cacti stolen from National Parks and Indian Reservations. Coyote Scat and Native Plant Conservationįrom the Los Angeles airport, the six Russian men weren’t carrying precious art or poached ivory.
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