Affiliation:
1. Ria Olivier Herbarium, Department of Botany Nelson Mandela University P.O. Box 77000, Gqeberha 6031 South Africa
2. Foundational Biodiversity Science Division South African National Biodiversity Institute Private Bag X101 Pretoria 0001 South Africa
3. Department of Plant and Soil Sciences University of Pretoria Pretoria 0002 South Africa
Abstract
AbstractIn recent years the poaching of, especially, succulent plants from the wild in South Africa has developed into an enormous, illegal industry, with the number of such plants confiscated increasing annually by over 250%. It has been estimated that more than 1.5 million plants have been illegally removed from the wild in the past three years. This conservation crisis has seen an unprecedented surge in poaching of representatives of families such as the Aizoaceae, Anacampserotaceae, Asphodelaceae, Crassulaceae, and several others, given that South Africa and neighbouring countries are host to about 45% of the known succulents of the world. Apart from annotated, geo‐referenced (type and other) herbarium specimens, further easily accessible sources of information on accurate occurrences of species are type localities published in protologues of plant names, and online resources that aim to mobilise biodiversity data. We propose drastic measures regarding the non‐disclosure of accurate locality information on specimens, in the literature, and on websites.
Subject
Plant Science,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
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