Plant poaching in southern Africa is aided by taxonomy : is a return to Caput bonae spei inevitable?

Abstract

In recent years the poaching of, especially, succulent plants from the wild in South Africa has developed into an enormous, illegal industry, with the number of such plants confiscated increasing annually by over 250%. It has been estimated that more than 1.5 million plants have been illegally removed from the wild in the past three years. This conservation crisis has seen an unprecedented surge in poaching of representatives of families such as the Aizoaceae, Anacampserotaceae, Asphodelaceae, Crassulaceae, and several others, given that South Africa and neighbouring countries are host to about 45% of the known succulents of the world. Apart from annotated, geo-referenced (type and other) herbarium specimens, further easily accessible sources of information on accurate occurrences of species are type localities published in protologues of plant names, and online resources that aim to mobilise biodiversity data. We propose drastic measures regarding the non-disclosure of accurate locality information on specimens, in the literature, and on websites.