Word: cactus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...What They're Stealing in Arizona: National Park Service officials will soon embed microchips in Arizona's signature saguaro cactus plants to deter thieves who dig them up and sell them to landscapers and nurseries. The microchips, which are inserted with a syringe, will help authorities identify stolen plants. Seventeen Carnegiea gigantea were stolen from Arizona's Saguaro National Park last year; they sell for about $1,000 each. The saguaro isn't the only cactus to be microchipped; Arizona and Nevada put chips in barrel cacti...
Meanwhile, the hunt for peyote has also driven the star cactus to the brink of endangerment, Terry warns - the star cactus looks confusingly similar to peyote to the untrained eye - and Terry has surveyed many large star cactus sites destroyed in South Texas, prompting CCI to raise funds for a cactus preserve in four counties along the Rio Grande...
...Cactus-rescue programs are also underway in neighboring Arizona, which has some of the most stringent cactus collection and preservation laws in the U.S. Landowners and developers in that state, for example, cannot move any cactus from its natural habitat without a license from the Department of Agriculture - and all legally moved or sold cactuses, even the tiny souvenir plants sold at the Phoenix airport, come with an official tag. So, conservationists have stepped in with an everybody-wins plan: the Tucson Cactus Society's internationally recognized rescue program seeks permission to harvest plants at development and mining sites...
...society is now gearing up to launch another protection program for Arizona's signature cactus, the saguaro, whose beautiful white blossoms are the state flower. While the saguaro is not among Arizona's seven endangered cactus species, the shallow-rooted plant is often preyed upon by poachers, who can earn up to $60 a foot for a wild specimen, Wiedhopf says. The desert symbol grows slowly, about an inch a year - it can take six or seven decades for the saguaro cactus to grow an arm - and those 15-to-20-foot saguaros that dot the Sonoran desert...
...despite conservationists best efforts, poachers and drug smugglers have little regard for them - or for protection laws. Some hard-core collectors won't miss any opportunity to swipe a cactus. That's why visitors to Copenhagen's botanical gardens must view rare cactus plants behind glass walls and, as a curator at London's world famous Kew Gardens told Terry, "Every year, we put out a plant and every year someone steals...