Protecting Plants Against Poaching

Blind prickly pear, Opuntia rufida

By Natalie Gonzalez, Assistant Conservation Scientist, and Dr. James Danoff-Burg, Director of Conservation

As everyone knows, we cannot conserve animals without making certain that the plant communities on which they depend are also thriving. Since our inception fifty years ago, The Living Desert has committed equally to plant conservation as much as animal conservation. As a botanical garden, we welcome guests to experience desert plants through our 60 gardens. We also share their stories, spread awareness of the threats that desert plants face, and show how you can contribute to plant conservation.

More than anywhere else on our grounds, the Desert Plant Conservation Center (DPCC) is where we do our plant conservation work. The Desert Plant Conservation Center is nestled across from the pronghorn habitat and adjacent to the carousel in Wild Americas. It is here, where you may explore and experience many of the plants you know and love from The Living Desert’s gardens and desert ecosystem in a new setting that also details our specific plant conservation efforts.

A walk through the DPCC will highlight our active propagation efforts, including thousands of live plants that have just started their big journeys towards the desert. Staff and volunteers germinate and grow plants for habitat restoration projects including enriching desert pupfish habitats at the Salton Sea and desert tortoise habitats across Southern California. These projects ensure that

Volunteer watering in the Desert Plant Conservation Center

local, native animal species have the food, shelter, and habitat necessary for them to thrive. The DPCC is also where we propagate plant species for The Living Desert’s animals, to provide enriching experiences and nutritional resources, both of which are essential to our animals’ well-being.

Importantly, The Living Desert is an official Plant Rescue Center as designated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. As a Plant Rescue Center, we receive and care for plants that have been recently confiscated. The DPCC allows our guests to see the effects of plant poaching firsthand – a key contribution in the effort to stopping plant poaching!

While many of us may be aware that animals are commonly poached for their body parts or for use as pets, fewer may know that plants face equally dire threats. Cacti and other succulents are among the most commonly trafficked plants by poachers. For example, of the almost 1,900 cacti species, all of which naturally exist only in the Americas, about 500 of them are threatened with extinction. And half of these threatened cacti are imperiled because of illegal collecting from the wild. Similar proportions threaten the African equivalents of cacti, the 2,000 species of succulent euphorbias, and over 550 aloe species. Their uniqueness, beauty, and hardy drought adaptations make succulents highly sought after among plant poachers and the collectors that they supply around the world.

Poachers looking to profit off of this market sometimes collect thousands of plants from just one area. The thoroughness with which they denude landscapes can threaten or wipe out entire populations of plants. In cases where plants are endemic and found in only one area or are otherwise rare, these collectors can quickly drive a species to extinction. Sadly, rarity is why many collectors are willing to pay big money, therefore continuing to drive the illegal market and threaten the existence of countless species in the wild.

The Living Desert is at the forefront of stopping plant poaching. As a Plant Rescue Center, we care for the confiscated plants that were illegally collected and trafficked. We will care for these plants at least until their country of origin requests their return. At the DPCC, you can see an assortment of cacti and succulents that were confiscated from traffickers. These plants arrived to us shriveled and barely clinging onto life. With prompt potting and gentle nourishing, nearly all returned to life.

Desert Plant Conservation Center

Rare Rescued Plants in the Desert Plant Conservation Center

Sadly, this relatively positive survival outcome is uncommon. As cacti and succulents are typically slowgrowing plants, some may spend decades growing, just to be uprooted and tossed in a bag to begin a journey that a mere fraction of the plants typically survive. Worse, the collectors will have also depleted the wild populations faster than the native populations could possibly replace those that were stolen. To prevent these mass losses of native plants, and the resulting effects on their ecosystems, we must actively work to protect them. What can you do to help stop this process? Know more about the plants you purchase! Becoming a plant parent is fun and exciting as there is always a new, interesting species at garden centers or online to purchase and add beauty to your home. However, when purchasing a unique plant, always ask where it came from and how it was propagated. Avoid purchasing plants for which the sourcing is unknown and only buy those that were grown from either a seed or a cutting from plants that were already in human care. Ensuring that your plants are ethically sourced is a critical part of the plant purchasing process.

Questioning where your plants come from and encouraging your friends and family to do the same informs shop owners that their customers care about where and how their plants are sourced. By working against illegal trafficking, you make ripples. Your ripples combine with those of others to make waves that will help to stop traffickers. Our actions can help protect the existence of threatened plant species in their natural habitats and the species that depend on them.

Caring for ecosystems is a complicated process requiring the work and involvement of a large team. On your next visit to The Living Desert, please come by our beautiful and unique Desert Plant Conservation Center to learn more about how you can help plant conservation – here in the Coachella Valley and around the world.