By Kotie Geldenhuys
Photos courtesy of Flicr and Wikimedia
It was a dark, moonless night in Namaqualand when a local man completed a sale. The next moment he was surprised as vehicles with flashing blue lights appeared out of the darkness and a police member from the Stock Theft and Endangered Species Unit leaped from behind a nearby bush, ordering him to the ground. Before the man could realise that he had been set up, he was already in handcuffs. He watched as police members opened the eight large cardboard boxes he had brought minutes earlier where they discovered thousands of small, brown, dumpling-like plants called Conophytums. These plants are native to this region of Africa and appeared to have been freshly uprooted. “It’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever done,” the man said after his arrest, while two police members counted the Conophytums and shovelled them into evidence bags. The first box alone contained around 1424 plants. The local poacher had expected to get R160 000 for his plants, but the police noted their market value overseas would be much higher (Trenchard, 2021).
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[This is only an extract of an article that is published in Servamus: September 2024. This article is available for purchase.]