By Temwani Mgunda:

Global demand for Southern Africa’s unique succulent plants is fuelling an illegal trade that threatens them with extinction.

Between 2019 and May 2024, more than 1.6 million illegally harvested succulents, representing around 650 species, were seized by law enforcement in South Africa while being trafficked to overseas markets.

The figures are revealed in a recent study by Traffic, a non-governmental organisation working on the trade of wild animals and plants. Succulent exploitation raises serious environmental and conservation concerns.

Dominique Prinsloo, a lead researcher for Traffic, says “the allure of rare and exotic succulents” has exerted huge pressure, especially on wild populations from South Africa, leading to unsustainable harvesting and even extinction.

Succulent plants usually grow in arid regions and store water in their roots, leaves or stems, which makes them look fleshy and swollen.

Prinsloo says the succulents most commonly traded illegally are from the genus Conophytum, followed by the Eriospermum and Tylecodon genera.

Succulents have ecological value as habitat and economic value as food and medicine, says Carina Bruwer, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies who published a study on the issue in 2023.

Bruwer observes that plants like succulents, orchids and cycads, are in high demand for their aesthetic appeal.

“In addition to being rare, many succulent species have unique characteristics such as thick stems, miniature shapes and beautiful flowers,” she tells Dialogue Earth. “These features – and their evolutionary survival skills – make them highly sought after by plant collectors and gardeners globally, resulting in the species being traded worldwide.”

Disasters also drive demand

Traffic’s report states that demand for succulents has existed since the 1990s, but that two key events may have influenced the recent surge: a drought induced by El Niño in 2015-16 and the Covid-19 pandemic.

The El Niño weather patterns triggered low and erratic rainfall throughout the Southern Africa region, which, Prinsloo says, led to higher-than-normal temperatures and a longer drought season. This sparked unexpected demand for domestic plants that do not require much water.

As for Covid, Prinsloo heard the lockdown of 2020 led to a notable shift in the players involved in the succulent trade.

Traffic’s report states that before the pandemic, foreign nationals – often from East Asia or Europe – would visit South Africa to remove plants and smuggle them back home. Since they could not travel to the region during the lockdown, they recruited local people to harvest succulents on their behalf.

“The foreign nationals might also have been afraid of the apparent high risk of