South Africa's succulents—small, fleshy, green plants sometimes shaped like roses or stars, and often found peeping out between rocks in dry areas—are sought after by an increasingly ...

The number of plants confiscated by South African law enforcement has increased by more than 200 percent since 2018, with over 242,000 succulents seized last year alone, according to CapeNature, a ...

It is hard to obtain figures for how many plants are being poached, but the non-governmental organisation Traffic reports that 1.6 million illegally harvested succulents were seized by South ...

South Africa’s Succulent Karoo is home to weird and wonderful flora that occur only in this small, arid part of the Earth. Many species are so tiny they are hard to spot with the naked eye. Some ...

One high-profile case saw a South Korean national, dubbed the "world's most notorious succulent thief", arrested in Cape Town with 60,000 rare Conophytum succulents, some hundreds of years old.

The illegal trade of succulent plants has emerged post-COVID-19 as a significant environmental and conservation concern.; The allure of rare and exotic succulents, often driven by social media trends ...

South Africa’s succulents – small, fleshy, green plants sometimes shaped like roses or stars, and often found peeping out between rocks in dry areas – are sought after by an increasingly ...

Chinese criminal syndicates, often the very same ones that already have established smuggling routes in South Africa for illegal abalone or rhinoceros horns, have now moved on to trafficking in ...

A biodiversity hotspot in a remote part of South Africa has become the hub of an illegal trade in protected plant species, with organised crime groups capitalising on overseas demand. "They've not ...