A Prickly Business

  • Manuel Gaona
  • India
  • Jul 18, 2014

 

 

 

They are spiky and spartan, mean more to Mexico than any other type of plant, and even feature on the national flag. No other country boasts as many different species of cacti.

But this botanical wealth has created a thriving black market. Collectors in North America, Europe and Asia will pay hundreds of dollars, sometimes thousands, for a single specimen. And where there’s demand, there’s supply.
Unscrupulous collectors (from abroad) are systematically stripping some of the best cactus sites in Mexico to sell the plants to global ‘cactus fans’. They often take the seed as well, leaving nothing behind.
The President of Mexico’s Association for Cacti and Succulents, Arturo Tonatiuh Arenas Jimenez, says Mexico’s local cactus dealers are not the culprits. They are kept in check by Mexican laws. “The discovery of every new species here is published in journals in Europe first and reported much later in Mexico,” he laments. “We often don’t realise what we have here, and you can’t appreciate what you don’t know.” To ensure the survival of the endangered cacti, federal authorities have set up an 800-hectares res
erve, 220 kilometres north of Mexico City in the State of Queretaro.
Here, in the Canon del Infiernillo (Hell’s Gorge), such species as Echinocactus grusonii - commonly called ‘golden barrel cactus’ or ’mother-in-law’s cushion’ - might now outlive the poachers.
”This is the first time that we have specifically set aside an area for the protection and cultivation of cactus in its natural habitat,” says Sergio Tapia from the State Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development.
Paradoxically, while the golden barrel is found by the millions in gardens and homes around the world and is raised for sale by greenhouses in Spain, the Netherlands and Israel, it faces near-extinction in its home territory!
Now, thankfully, it can grow in peace in the nature reserve, along with more than 50 other endemic species. ”It is amazing that so many different species converge in this one place, yet have such a narrow distribution,” says Tapia.
 Around half of Mexico’s territory is arid or semi-arid, which is the ideal environment for half of the almost 2,000 cactus species and succulents that are registered by UNESCO’s world network of biosphere reserves.  While the export and sale of endemic species is prohibited, it hasn’t stopped the looting.
 Last year, Mexican biologist Mario Alberto Valdez Marroquin discovered a new species, the Aztekium valdezii, in the dry Nuevo Leon mountains in north-east Mexico. But before he could even publicise his find, five seeds had been offered for auction on a Czech ‘cactophile’ Internet forum.
 The Romanian botanical magazine. Xerophilia. also published an illustrated article about the discovery. The exact location of the wild plants was withheld, ‘for conservation reasons’, but new photos of the plant quickly appeared in botanical trading circles. “There are also locals who steal cacti, but them we have under control,” says Jimenez, the President of the Cacti and Succulents Association.
Fellow cactus expert Francisco Valente Rabell agrees that despite the preservation measures, Mexico’s rich biodiversity continues to draw unscrupulous collectors from around the world. The species particularly at risk are the Ariocarpus kotschoubeyanus, Turbinicarpus krainzianus and Echinocereus schmolii. “Of course the dealers also always want to get hold of any newly discovered species,” adds Rabell.


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