Poachers target South Africa's 'miracle' plant with near impunity

NIEUWOUDTVILLE, South Africa — It is the devil’s breath, this wind, blowing dry and mercilessly across a plain left threadbare by decades of overgrazing. With this wind at their backs, small groups of mostly men have toiled upslope, along historic shepherding paths to the top of an escarpment 600 meters (2,000 feet) high over the past year. They’ve been recruited by poaching syndicates to find one specific plant at the top of the plateau, hidden in a remote and rugged gorge.

Clivia mirabilis, the miracle clivia.

Most clivia species grow in shady, damp, woody groves. The miracle clivia got its name because it has carved out a niche on the arid, hot escarpment on the edge of South Africa’s western near-desert. The area has an unusual climate, with winter rainfall and summer temperatures that can climb to 45° Celsius (113° Fahrenheit). The plant can withstand the harsh sun, and its maroon stem and hanging candelabra-like blooms set it apart from other clivia species.

The best-known populations grow in a single gorge in Oorlogskloof Nature Reserve, on the edge of the Bokkeveld Plateau in Northern Cape province, where the species was first identified in 2002. Private landowners on the border of the reserve are reluctant to say if the plant grows on their properties.

This is wild, rugged country. When Mongabay visited the reserve in November, field rangers were called out to find two tourist parties that had lost their way on the paths whose signs had gone missing or been damaged by fire. According to someone familiar with the reserve, this happens frequently. Facilities are rudimentary, with only 10 people working to manage the 4,776-hectare (11,802-acre) reserve. Access permits are issued during office hours in the nearby town of Nieuwoudtville, about 30 minutes’ drive away, but sometimes there’s no one around to present them to at the reserve’s single access gate. There’s little phone coverage, and the challenging terrain makes moving about on foot slow and difficult.

Drone footage, taken on private farmland near the entrance to Oorlogskloof Nature Reserve, shows the precipitous drop from the edge of the Bokkeveld Plateau. Poachers are dropped off on farm roads here on the escarpment, or down on the plain, and must hike up into the reserve. They often spend a few days on site, finding, digging up and pruning the plants before hauling them out in sacks. Image by Leonie Joubert for Mongabay.

The man who appeared out of the veld on the reserve’s edge was lost, thirsty, and in need of help. Artist Saar Steenkamp was watering plants outside her farmhouse, adjacent to Oorlogskloof Nature Reserve in November 2023, when he approached her. She was surprised to see a stranger appearing in such a remote part of the plateau.

He offered a typically South African greeting, even though his towering stature and complexion suggested he wasn’t from these parts. “Good morning, gogo [grandmother].”

He told her he was from the Congo, Steenkamp says, but had been unable to find work after arriving in Johannesburg. He was told of a job opportunity 1,250 kilometers (780 miles) away, in Vredendal, on the plains below the escarpment and the Oorlogskloof reserve — and it involved plants. When he got here, he was recruited into a group that was transported to a site and told to dig up and prune a specific plant.

It was only when their supervisor instructed the group to abandon their work and run that he realized something was amiss. Separated from the others, he spent the night in the wilderness without food or water, and began making his way on foot through the reserve’s harsh, rugged terrain in the direction of what he thought was the nearest town.

Since the first poached clivia plants were found at a house in a Cape Town suburb four hours’ drive south of the reserve in October 2023, a little over 60 people have been arrested in connection with clivia poaching. Half are South African citizens, according to police figures, and the remainder from places including neighboring Zimbabwe and several other African countries.

A year ago, word spread among conservationists and criminal syndicates that clivias were selling for exorbitant prices at auctions in China. Since then, the syndicates have tracked the wild population to the only place on the planet where it grows: a single gorge in a reserve in South Africa’s Northern Cape province. Image courtesy Dave Garriock.

The surge in succulent poaching began in 2019; a spokesperson for the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) told South African news site GroundUp that police had seized 415,000 succulent plants by the end of 2021. By 2022, South African authorities had drawn up a national succulent poaching action plan. It identified problems including a lack of data about succulents in Northern Cape that are vulnerable to poaching, inadequate funding for the conservation areas run by the province where many are found, and poverty in surrounding communities making it easy for poaching syndicates to recruit people to search for them. It outlined a strategy to identify hotspots, improve surveillance and enforcement, and explore developing a legal industry to grow desirable plants in nurseries.

The action plan outlines SANBI’s role in addressing succulent poaching, such as housing seized plants and cultivating them at national nurseries. With funding support from WWF, SANBI has since hired two additional staff focused on responding to succulent poaching.

SANBI is now housing seized clivia plants, with the help of the Clivia Society, which has provided growing material and potting bags, according to society chair Dave Garriock.

Conservationists say the same issues hampering Northern Cape enforcement authorities’ effectiveness in addressing succulent poaching apply to the Oorlogskloof clivia. SANBI didn’t respond to specific questions on how it’s interpreting the role assigned to it in the succulent poaching action plan to the newly urgent clivia situation.

These clivias have been rescued, but it’s unlikely they’ll be returned to their wild location, owing to the ongoing risk of poaching and the chance of introducing novel diseases into the wild population. Image courtesy of Dave Garriock.

Since the first poached clivia were found, some 5,000 more plants have been seized, according to SANBI, which it says amount to an estimated 80% of the total population in the Oorlogskloof reserve.

There is recent, extensive evidence of poachers digging for plants, and signs of camps where they had stayed in the reserve overnight. At one site, an estimated 200 clivia plants were recently found dug up and abandoned in the veld. SANBI has since rescued these individuals, which are now in the care of one of its botanical gardens.

The Northern Cape Department of Agriculture, Environment Affairs, Rural Development and Land Reform (DAERL), which manages the Oorlogskloof reserve, acknowledged increased poaching of C. mirabilis since Dec. 2023, but declined to respond to questions relating to poaching figures and mitigation measures. But a nationwide survey of provincial reserves published by the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) and the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA) in 2020 found that most of the province’s reserves need “urgent support and attention.” The report attributes this situation to a lack of funding, poor general management and infrastructure maintenance, and inadequate law enforcement.

There are very few officers to cover the vast spaces of a sparsely populated province, so poaching can often take place unobserved. The national action plan for succulents also points to a general lack of understanding of wildlife crimes involving plants in particular, which affects quality of surveillance at borders and on roads, and the quality of prosecution that follows when arrests are made and cases reach court.

The lost Congolese man never gave his name, but after Steenkamp sent him on his way with sandwiches and water, he trudged off down the farm road. He seemed to make no attempt to evade the police, who she heard later tracked him down and are believed to have questioned him.

They wouldn’t have held him, as he had no plants in his possession. He was likely to have been one of the many brought to this harsh, arid landscape by criminal syndicates in search of the miracle clivia.

Banner image: A rescued miracle clivia (Clivia mirabilis), at one of the South African National Biodiversity Institute’s nurseries. Image courtesy Dave Garriock.

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