One of the terms 1 have heard used to describe dwarf succulents in South. Africa is ‘Green Diamonds’. This derives from the fact that some locals believe that it is both substantially easier and safer to harvest, plants such as Conophytum than conduct illicit digging for diamonds.The sheer scale of Illegal harvesting of succulents is tally frightening. Since 2019 almost 400,000 individual Conophytum plants have been confiscated from poachers in South Africa and are being looked after at Kirstenbosch and other botanical gardens. It is not unreasonable to assume that confiscations represent at the vety most 10 of all the plants illegally removed from habitat then we can estimate that at least 4 million. Conaphytumplmts have been collected in the last three years alone (the vast majority of these ia 2020-21). TMs figure is almost certainly an underestimate. Many oftheseharvestedplantshave probably not survived. Hie poaching also impacts floral diversity geographically in that the poaching appears to be primarily centred around pasts of central Namaqualand and the Kichtersveld. While most poacMng seemingly fakes place on ‘open lands’ the presence of plants on forms or nature reserves is no deterrent.
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