Recording of The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade by Jared Margulies

[MatDz]

Might be of an interest to some: https://youtu.be/B_iPP4Kn0x8?si=VVa7ECkgqxRqwZgc

Presented by the book (under the same title) author himself.

[topsy]

Hi,

We have the book here, bought it through NHBS before Christmas, BCSS is mentioned many times or rather BCCS is mentioned! I don't know who proof read this tome but they didn't do very well.

Suzanne

[MatDz]

Oh, that's a bummer! I haven't started this book yet, but the talk was interesting enough for it to stay on the "to read" pile.

[habanerocat]

I started the book but found it fairly heavy going to be honest.
I'll have to start again....

[SimonT]

I've read this book. I agree that it could of benefited from a bit more editing and this is evident before even starting the book. It is a strange title, "Cactus hunters.." as the book does not completely focus on cacti! I also did not like where the abstract stated "The Cactus Hunters takes us to the heart of this conundrum: the mystery of how and why ardent lovers of these plants engage in their illicit trade". I'd have much preferred "The Cactus Hunters takes us to the heart of this conundrum: the mystery of how and why some ardent lovers of these plants engage in their illicit trade"!

But even with editing issues I think the book was well worth reading. The book did change my opinion as to how at risk populations of plants should best be protected. I liked the real-world examples, and would have liked more of these at the expense of some of the psychoanalysis.

[somersetken]

There is a podcast about this book “on the ledge” by Jane Perone too. Episode 283.
If anyone is interested. She can be a bit dull in places.

[Cidermanrolls]

Thanks Mat, I watched this end to end on a cold and wet winter afternoon.

The presentation was very interesting but, I feel, selective. I’m sure the type of collector he talks about exists, but I share little in common with them. Maybe I am the odd man out? I’ve never felt the urge to own ‘real’ plants lifted from the wild, I’m more than happy to grow from seed. I don’t see myself as a conservationist, protecting wild populations through my little plant-zoo.

Jared’s analysis of eBay sales was way off the mark. Plants advertised online as ‘own roots’ are not equivalent to poached plants. Grafting changes the scion and many collectors don’t want a grafted plant as a result. I use grafting as a tool, in extremis, but my aim is always to grow on own roots if possible. His comment on ‘no paperwork’ does not mean the plants were poached. It reflects that the convention designed to protect endangered species in the wild is applied without thought or attention to how and where the plants were raised. That CITES applies to the Schick Echinopsis hybrids that I collect just as it applies to Mammillaria bertholdii shows how unfit for purpose the convention is. The Schick hybrids never existed in the wild. That he suggested the name Ariocarpus confusus was used to try to pull the wool over the eyes of enforcement bodies was rediculous. That the plant looked beat up does not mean it was poached from the wild. It might have been, but it might equally just have been a sickly plant.

It felt that Jared missed out a major subset of collectors - the ‘set hunters’. I am victim to that obsession and have been since collecting PG Tips tea cards as a kid, then Mammillarias in my teens, Schick hybrids recently and now Cole collection number Lithops. I’ve long felt that this set obsession is something that the male of the species suffers more from than the female, so it was no surprise to hear his gender statistics.

Jared touched on the question of trade in cultivated plants and its relation to protection of wild populations. He hinted, I thought, at some personal sympathy with that argument. That is an area I felt he could have gone deeper.

[Mike P]

As far as I can see the days when folk wanted real habitat plants seems long gone in the UK.

[SimonT]

The book actually has a long section on the motivations of collectors, including mentioning 'set collectors' such as "taxonomic collectors" and the gender bias among these collectors. I would not read these sections of the book if you are easily offended! I did not take these sections too seriously as the same reasoning could to some extent be applied to anyone who has more of anything than they really need- which is a big slice of the population. I think this could be applied, for example, to anyone with more than two pairs of shoes!

I agree that it is really poor to consider C&S collectors as some sort of coherent group. But it does seem reasonable that there is a tiny subset of collectors, somewhere in the world, who provide a market for poached plants. A relatively few individuals then go out and satisfy this demand by illegally poaching plants from habitat. So making it difficult to buy and sell poached plants would then seem to be a good way to stop this. However, after reading the book it seems that demand for plants can be quite transient and they need to be poached and then prepared for the "market" which takes some time. I took from this that to wipe out an endangered plant population what it might just take is for a small number of people in the world to decide a plant might have future value, even if there is not a current market for that plant. So then some form of 'local custodians' would seem to be really important for long -term conservation, even if existing demand is mostly satisfied by legal mass-propagation of plants. This was my conclusion though- the book rambles a bit in places and I'm not sure this is what I'm supposed to conclude!

[habanerocat]

I picked this up again a while ago and gave it my best shot, but dropped it again as soon as my journal came through the door.

I'd hate to give any 'cactus' book a bad review but I'd have to agree with Colin Walker's assessment in the journal that it's 'heavy going'.