An international cactus smuggling operation worth over $1 million has led to a landmark court ruling that could transform how we protect rare plants worldwide, The Guardian reported.
What happened?
In February 2020, Italian police discovered more than 1,000 rare cacti in the home of Andrea Piombetti, a well-known plant collector who called himself "The King of the Cactus Pirates." Alongside his accomplice Mattia Crescentini, Piombetti had smuggled the plants from Chile through Greece and Romania before selling them to collectors across Europe, Asia, and North America.
"These were incredible plants, they were ancient plants, hundreds of years old," Andrea Cattabriga, a cactus expert who helped identify the stolen specimens, told the BBC. Some of the cacti were older than the smugglers themselves, growing just one centimeter per year in harsh desert conditions.
Why is cactus smuggling concerning?
The illegal plant trade threatens biodiversity in some of Earth's most unique ecosystems.
"The collection of a few specimens can really affect the species that could face extinction. But each living form in the desert is important because it is a very selective environment where biodiversity is very complex," cactus expert Andrea Cattabriga explains.
Local volunteer Mauricio Gonzalez describes how poachers in Chile's Atacama Desert can wipe out entire species: "Sometimes the volunteers hide their favorite plants under rock slates to conceal them from potential poachers. Since the cacti tend to have highly localised endemisms with small populations found only in specific sites, poachers can wipe out a whole species with a couple of flicks of a chisel."
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Research shows that 76% of Copiapoa species are endangered because of trafficking and rising global temperatures.
"They are in very rapid decline," says Pablo Guerrero, a cactus researcher at the Universidad de Concepción. "Some will go extinct in the wild soon. It is very dramatic."
When plant populations vanish, entire networks of insects and animals lose their food sources and habitats. Human communities also suffer as natural attractions disappear and ecosystems become less stable.
What's being done about cactus smuggling?
The case has created two exciting breakthroughs for plant protection. First, about 840 of the stolen cacti were sent back to Chile, one of the first known cases of plants being returned to their country of origin.
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Even more significant was the court's ruling that the smugglers must pay €20,000 (about $21,594) to a conservation organization to repair the ecological harm they caused.
"We're giving plants a right, a right to not be destroyed, because they are beings," Cattabriga said.
This approach is now being explored in Uganda, the Philippines, and Indonesia, creating a potential wave of "green litigation" whereby poachers will pay for the full environmental cost of their crimes.
You can help by researching the origin of any unusual plants before buying them, supporting conservation organizations working to protect rare species, and reporting suspicious plant sales to local authorities.
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