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Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics published last week. This is usually a Tuesday evening regular post at GEI (but can be posted at other times).
Chile is a hotbed of illegal cactus smuggling. And according to recent findings, this black market trade could result in numerous cactus species going into extinction.
Officials recovered the cactuses during two raids in Italy, in 2020. A Copiapoa solaris specimen is one of hundreds of cactuses that were recently recovered by Operation Atacama. (Image credit: Andrea Cattabriga) Rare cactuses taken illegally from the driest place on Earth are finally going home. Cactuses in the genuses Eriosyce grow in arid regions in northern Chile, such as the Atacama Desert, and a number of these species are highly prized by specialist collectors for landscaping and as houseplants. However, Chile does not allow export of the cactuses, making them a popular target for ...
by Tyler Durden Saturday, May 22, 2021 - 08:00 PM Some of the world's rarest cacti are found in the deserts of South America. A recent raid in Italy uncovered a smuggling network of thorny succulents, according to NYTimes. The year's long operation, dubbed "Operation Atacama," was a collaborative effort that began in February 2020 by Italian and Chilean authorities to return some of the rarest cacti to Chile. Andrea Cattabriga, a cactus expert and president of the Association for Biodiversity and Conservation, told NYT that Operation Atacama was absolutely stunning when 1,000 of some...
updated: May 21 2021, 14:34 ist Andrea Cattabriga has seen a lot of cactuses where they didn’t belong. But he’d never seen anything like Operation Atacama, a bust carried out last year in Italy. A cactus expert and president of the Association for Biodiversity and Conservation, Cattabriga often helps the police identify the odd specimen seized from tourists or intercepted in the post. This time, however, Cattabriga was confronted by a stunning display: more than 1,000 of some of the world’s rarest cactuses, valued at over $1.2 million on the black market. Almost all of the protected pla...