Word: cactus
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They look sturdy, even hostile, but cactus plants in the southwestern United States and Mexico are under attack. According to wildlife conservationists, cactuses are being dug up and smuggled away at an alarming rate by over-zealous collectors looking for rare species and "narco-tourists" mining the desert for the small, psychotropic peyote plant...
...thievery is fueled in part by the conservation effort itself. "International rules aimed at preventing the movement of plants and seeds in order to protect them have had unintended consequences," says Dick Wiedhopf, president of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America and its Tucson chapter. "They have made [cactuses] more valuable." That explains why wildlife - including cactus - ranks just below drugs and guns as the most popular good smuggled out of Mexico, according to experts...
...Cactus collectors are a surprisingly fervid bunch. A trawl of the enthusiasts' presence on the Internet - some of the plants' biggest fans are in Scandinavia, the Czech Republic and Japan - yields hundreds of sites offering information about cactuses as well as nurseries where collectors can buy. "There are more sites, more information than we have ever had," Wiedhopf says. "It's marvelous. That's the upside." The problem is that some collectors don't want to buy from nurseries. Rather than purchasing from, say, the acres and acres of cacti nurseries in the Netherlands, avid collectors travel to Mexico instead...
...posts, about 4 ft. (1 m) high, filled with concrete to thwart plasma torches and linked by surplus railroad iron. This fence is intended to stop cars, not walkers--but anyone crossing out here must be ready for a parched hike of 30 miles (48 km) or more, through cactus lands and bombing ranges, to the nearest road. That's a dwindling population, said CBP helicopter pilot Gabriel Mourik. "I used to catch 100 people in a day," Mourik said. "Yesterday, it was just...
This desert is all about harsh juxtapositions--flat dust interrupted by sudden mountains; a delicate flower crowning a column of cactus spines. And now a new one, man-made: the sight of a smooth, new dirt road, huffing yellow construction equipment and mile after mile of reinforced steel. This, in a place that had never before seen a project more elaborate than a shack...