On the hunt for a contested succulent, Jared Margulies probes abundance and extinction with cactus hunters in Bahia, Brazil.
I am several days into a multi-week trip in the states of Minas Gerais and Bahia, Brazil, with a group of European cactus and succulent enthusiasts, as part of my research into the global illicit succulent trade. I was invited to join the group to better understand collector activities and desires that circulate around their encounters with plants. Above all, we are in Brazil to see its dazzling biodiversity of cacti. Today, we are in Bahia to visit several localities of Melocactus azureus, a species known for its gorgeous matte-blue skin and round form, topped with a red and white cap known as the cephalium.
Melocactus azureus is listed on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) as an Appendix II plant, but the collectors I am with think it is a CITES Appendix I plant—and they have strong opinions about this confusion. Appendix II of CITES allows regulated trade in listed species with appropriate national export permits (which can be difficult to acquire), while Appendix I is reserved for those species in which legal trade is effectively banned to control the impact of wildlife trade on species endangerment. Appendix II poses challenges for collectors to legally acquire desirable plant material, but Appendix I makes legal acquisition far more difficult.
Tom, a Dutch collector, says that the last time they were at this location, they found ten new populations with abundant numbers of plants, which isn’t reflected in either the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of the species—which classifies M. azureus as Endangered—or its CITES listing as Appendix I. Milton, the Brazilian botanist serving as a guide on the trip, repeatedly explains to Tom that although the population here is abundant, the species is extremely restricted in extent, leaving it vulnerable. Milton thinks about abundance across geographic and temporal scales differently from Tom, who seems mostly preoccupied with the abundance as reflected in the number of individual plants he can observe. Tom argues there are millions of individual plants found across its range. “Why can’t we celebrate that?” Tom asks Milton. “It’s good,” Milton replies, “but one development and they could all be wiped out.” For Milton, abundance would seem to demand what I imagine as genetic and ecological redundancy across populations at a greater, regional scale. He has seen examples of seemingly abundant populations erased by rapid developmental activities.
Our first stop of the day is one of the oldest known locations for Melocactus azureus, but now, there are only a few plants. “It used to be a relatively large population, but it was collected, but also people chopped it up and fed [it] to cattle,” Milton tells me. Tom seems defensive at this remark about over-collection. “You say that, but how long have people been assessing populations?” he replies. “Well, this is based on historical accounts of other collectors,” Milton says.
Although the population here is abundant, the species is extremely restricted in extent.
We search for plants for a while, without success. “This is a typical example of an endangered population—we found two plants here ten years ago,” Milton says. Rob, another British collector and enthusiast searching nearby, thinks he’s found a specimen. The plant isn’t very blue, but it does have a well-developed cephalium. As a novice, it looks to me like any other Melocactus that we’ve seen on the trip. Milton does not believe it is Melocactus azureus. This is another well-described, well-loved locality now absent a member of its collective ecology.
When I catch up with Milton, he explains that we are now headed to the type locality for the species—the location where a physical plant was collected and placed in an herbarium as the species type. All plant species have a type specimen somewhere in the world in an herbarium; until they do, they cannot be formally recognized as a species. “There will be a few more plants [there], but it’s now next to the city of Jussara and it is a garbage dump. It will disappear soon,” Milton says.
After a drive, we arrive at the dump site, just on the edge of town. Visiting a type locality with passionate plant people often lends gravitas and importance to the place, distinguishing it from other locales. The visit to a type locality represents a kind of collecting encounter with the place tied to the genuine article—the species type. And yet what we saw before us felt nothing like what I had imagined. The locality served as an informal dumping site and was covered in trash. Many cacti were present, but many were also entangled in plastic bags. I had been mistaken in imagining that a type locality somehow offered a plant a degree of formal protection.
“I don’t know whether to be impressed or depressed, but Peter went out and said he looked through the mess and saw lots of young plants,” Thibault, a Belgian collector, says to me as we stand together looking at the landscape. Thibault adores Melocactus, and so I ask him if he is happy to see so many plants despite the state of the landscape. “There are never enough Melocactus for me!” He replies happily. I ask him if he has found any plants bearing fruit. He has, he replies, and he will take these home to Belgium. In Brazil, this is illegal. At the same time, it is seen as socially acceptable to the collectors I am travelling with in a way that removing a living plant from the ground would not be. For them, the taking of small quantity of seeds is seen as a way to ensure other people can grow and reproduce the plants they desire in a way that does minimal harm to wild populations. But other scientists disagree, and today in Mexico, the country with the greatest species richness in cacti, even cactus seeds require CITES Appendix II export permits.
Milton notes that his waypoint for the type specimen is 200 meters in the other direction, where we see houses built at the edge of town. “Jared, take a picture of the houses,” Milton says. “That is what is coming. My original waypoint for this location doesn’t exist anymore. And soon they will start building here where we are standing.” Based on his coordinates, the original type locality is now part of the village. Some in the group are happy to see so many cacti, but for others it is hard to feel optimistic about their fate, covered in plastic bags on the edge of a slowly growing village.
—
I had been mistaken in imagining that a type locality somehow offered a plant a degree of formal protection.
After spending an hour weaving our way through the population to take photographs of plants, we drive to a more recently described locality teeming with plants—easily tens of thousands or more. By now, it is well over a 105 degrees Farenheit and the sun is beating down.
Amidst this abundance of plants, Tom is keen to demonstrate to me how well the species is doing from a conservation standpoint. “Look how many seedlings there are, Jared … more than [even] last time I think.” Milton, who is standing with us, disagrees. He explains that all the mature plants we see are a few decades old, and it takes one to two decades for the species to reach maturity. Tom turns back to me. “This place deserves to have its story told loud and clear and everywhere.” Tom believes that it is unreasonable for the plant to be listed on CITES and classified as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. For him, it delegitimizes the scientific authority of these programs, and points to a more fundamental issue: the lack of recognition of botanical expertise among the amateur cactus and succulent hobby community.
“(W)hy do these assessors get to give it such a lukewarm assessment?” Tom says, turning to Milton in frustration. “Because there are no herbarium specimens [for the locality],” Milton replies. This population essentially doesn’t exist in the realm of conservation knowledge. “Well I think it stinks,” Tom says, frustrated. He continues, “Why won’t they come and do the assessment?… I just feel it is a lie. And I feel it personally because I’m not a trained botanist … I’m afraid I’ve always perceived a certain arrogance among the profession, and I think it’s a great shame, and I will work hard to fight that. Thibault, can you do an article in Grusonii about this place? Because Milton is saying that by no means have the assessments taken these kinds of places into account.” Thibault says he would be happy to publish about it in multiple outlets. “I want the truth to be known from the organization that is supposed to be bringing me the truth,” Tom says. “By all means send a verifier if need be but I am going to make sure the truth gets out.”
As tensions rise, the conversation is cut short by a sudden yelp from another collector on the trip, Chris, who has been stabbed in the foot by a cactus spine.
—
In this encounter with a species of cactus in Brazil that, depending on whom I asked, was either threatened or thriving, key tensions and questions of expertise and scientific knowledge came to a head. For many of the collectors I travelled with, the appearance of abundance led to frustration that scientists still considered the plant endangered, when instead they hoped to share stories of promise and conservation success. For them, this apparent contradiction reinforced feelings that their expertise was not valued. I suspect that, alongside these contests over expertise, collectors also felt that the refusal of scientists and conservation authorities to recognize abundance reinforced the idea that over-collection was a cause of species concern, framing amateur collectors as conservation villains.
I went to Brazil to understand these often-fraught relationships pitting the formal and scientific community against the cactus and succulent collectors. Both groups maintain they are acting in the best interest of the species of concern: for conservationists, this typically means working to construct protected areas or habitat management plans, improve conservation enforcement, and restrict species trade; for many collectors, it means ensuring that people who desired them as ornamental plants around the world could acquire them sustainably. If being a conservationist means working to ensure the enduring survival and persistence other wild species, the collectors assuredly see themselves in this light—even when breaking international trade regulations in the name of conservation.
In these fantasies of abundance and extinction, the ecology of the plants felt profoundly absent.
Beyond these contests over the legitimacy and moral authority, my field notes also reveal how both plant collectors and conservationists feel their way through the weight of extinction as an unnerving proximity to permanent absence. This small moment in Brazil with Melocactus azureus revealed meanings behind feelings of frustration, worry, and enjoyment experienced in relation to species flourishing and diminution in a moment of uncertainty. The desire to rejoice in abundance described by Tom, set against the dismal gloom when confronting the march of a population under threat from housing development, elicited a variety of responses from the collectors I travelled with. And yet in these fantasies of abundance and extinction, the ecology of the plants felt profoundly absent. What sorts of relations did Melocactus azureus keep; what other kinds of life might be lost if it truly vanished? How might abundance be measured otherwise, as a kind of flourishing? Alternatively, in places where the species seemed to be thriving, what kinds of relations were sustaining it? Multispecies relations in times of extinction are fraught with uncertainty, but possibility as well. How might we learn from these ecologies to foster such growth elsewhere?
Jared Margulies is an assistant professor in the department of geography and the environment at the University of Alabama. His first book, The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade, was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2023.