South Africa: More Than 2.5-Million Succulents Seized From Poachers

South Africa's Western Cape has seized over 2.5 million illegally harvested succulent plants since 2018, but this likely represents less than a quarter of the total poaching activity, according to CapeNature. CapeNature, the South African National Biodiversity Institute, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, and TRAFFIC presented a plan to coordinate a response to poaching at the provincial standing committee for environmental affairs.

Succulent poaching has surged since 2019, with millions of plants harvested from the biodiversity hotspot in the Northern and Western Cape. The plants are sold in markets in China, South Korea, Japan and Germany. Most poaching occurs in the Northern Cape and the plants are moved to the Western Cape. In the first half of 2023, nearly 376,000 plants were seized in 26 incidents, mostly in the Western Cape.

Poaching is not only an environmental crisis but also a socio-ecological one, with local harvesters often being poor and citing unemployment as a driver of the practice, according to TRAFFIC's David Newton. Poaching funds organized crime and poses a serious threat to the survival of endemic plant species, many of which are already extinct in the wild.

CapeNature's Deon Hignett recommended strengthening enforcement, improving storage for seized plants, and training SAPS, prosecutors and magistrates on biodiversity crime. The committee also considered the return of the green court, a specialized environmental court which prosecuted several abalone cases in the early 2000s.