THE trap to snare the suspected cycad poacher was laid with careful planning and baited with plants guaranteed to pique his interest: two cycads from a species now so rare in the wild that it’s at risk of extinction.
Classified as “endangered” on the Red List of plants, these were Waterberg cycads, with its scientific name Encephalartos eugene-maraisii honouring the Afrikaans lawyer, naturalist, poet and writer who spent the opening decades of the 20th century studying nature in the cycad-rich Waterberg region in what is now Limpopo.
Majestic cycads, members of an ancient group whose ancestors date back an incredible 340 million years, are highly sought-after as ornamentals in landscape gardening, and South Africa holds a disproportionately high number of the world’s 350 cycad species. Cycad enthusiasts are prepared to pay thousands of rands for individual plants of rare species, and perhaps even tens of thousands of rands for large mature specimens.
Unfortunately, 12 of our 37 Encephalartos species (Encephalartos is one of three genera in the cycad group) are regarded as “critically endangered” while four are already considered “extinct in the wild” and another four are “endangered” – mostly as a result of poaching from the wild and habitat loss.
The suspect, Jan Adriaan van Vuuren of Pretoria East, did indeed find the bait irresistible when offered to him, and on December 6th 2016 he illegally bought the two endangered Waterberg cycads from a seller who was unknown to him. But the seller was actually an undercover police agent and a member of a joint police task force from the Department of Environmental Affairs’ Green Scorpions and the Hawks in Limpopo. Van Vuuren couldn’t resist a second offer from this seller either, and a week later, on December 14th, he illegally bought two more of these plants from the agent.
Another week passed and then the task force struck, arresting Van Vuuren at his home in the La Montagne area where they found a further 35 cycads for which he didn’t have permits and which were believed to have been poached from the wild.
Two of these 35 plants were Eastern Cape blue cycads (Encephalartos horridus), another species classified as “endangered” on the Red List.
There were also 17 Woolly cycads (Encephalartos lanatus, also known as the Olifants River cycad), seven White-haired cycads (Encephalartos friderici-guilielmi) and a single Karoo cycad (Encephalartos lehmannii), all classified as “near threatened”; six Drakensberg cycads (Encephalartos ghellinckii) and a single Lebombo cycad (Encephalartos senticosus), classified as “vulnerable” to extinction; and a single Modjadji cycad (Encephalartos transvenosus), named in honour of the Rain Queens, the female dynasty of the Lobedu people in Limpopo whose hereditary name is Modjadji. This species is classified as of “least concern”.
All eight species are endemic to southern Africa and most are endemic to South Africa, meaning that they occur in the wild only here and nowhere else on Earth.
Van Vuuren was not registered as a nursery operator with a permit to trade in cycads and had only a possession permit from the Gauteng provincial nature conservation department that allowed him to keep a registered number of these plants.
Caught red-handed, he opted to plead guilty to three charges under the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act regulations: two charges of illegally buying cycads from the undercover agent without a permit, and one of being in possession of 35 cycads without the necessary permits. Last month, he was sentenced in the Pretoria Regional Court to a fine of R200 000 or three years’ imprisonment, with half of the sentence suspended for five years.
It wasn’t as though Van Vuuren could have argued ignorance of the law, as he has a history of involvement with cycads going back at least 16 years. Under his “accomplishments” on the resumé he posted online on SlideShare, he states “2002 – Monte Casino Bird Garden design and layout of Cycad gardens”. Monte Casino, the entertainment complex at Fourways outside Johannesburg, boasts that its Bird Gardens have “the largest and most diverse private collection of South African Cycads in the world, with over 750 plants from 37 different species”.
Van Vuuren has also posted online advertisements offering to buy cycads. A July 2016 post on a Facebook classifieds group page reads “Cycads / broodbome gesoek – Betaal beste pryse kontant [Cycads sought. Pay best prices cash]” with his name and cellphone number. There was also an advertisement on the Zululand Classifieds Facebook page, also in July 2016: “I am looking for cycads/broodbome. Pay best prices cash” and again listing his name and cellphone number.
In a statement, Department of Environmental Affairs’ spokesman Albie Modise welcomed the collaboration between the Green Scorpions and the Hawks that led to Van Vuuren’s conviction. “This sentence sends a message to those trafficking cycads, which is the most trafficked plant species in South Africa,” he said.
Modise explained that the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act (NEMBA), makes provision for sentences for cycad-related offences of a fine equal to three times the commercial value of the plant or R10 million, whichever is greater, and/or a jail sentence not exceeding 10 years, or both.
Some cycad poachers have indeed been on the receiving end of such harsh punishment. In September 2016, East London’s Daily Dispatch newspaper reported that two men had been sentenced to five years in jail and to a further fine of R800,000 or four years’ in jail, suspended for five years, for stealing eight protected cycads near Stutterheim that were valued at R200,000. An investigator was reported as saying the two were believed to have run a Gauteng-based cycad poaching syndicate.
And three months later, The Herald newspaper in Port Elizabeth reported that six cycad poachers caught stealing 81 endangered cycads from a farm near Kirkwood were each sentenced to 10 years in jail, and to a fine of R60,000 suspended for five years. The men were all Zimbabweans and the cycads, destined for a Gauteng buyer, were valued at R60,000.
According to a US nursery that specialises in cycads and palms, many specialist nurseries sell cultivated Encephalartos eugene-maraisii – which it describes as “a fabulous species” – for over $100 (R1,400-plus) per caudex inch (2.54cm) because of its rarity. (Cycads in the US are sold by caudex (woody stem) length, not pot size.) Because Encephalartos eugene-maraisii can grow up to four metres in length, a single large mature plant could have a theoretical market value in the US of some $15,750, or about R225,000. US-grown cycads may not be exported back to South Africa.
So despite his stiff fine, it seems Van Vuuren has escaped lightly, and there appears to be some worrying inconsistency in the way in which NEMBA-suggested sentences are being applied as far as South Africa’s wonderfully rich but highly threatened cycad diversity is concerned.
Cones of White-haired Cycad, Kirstenbosch:
Cones of the White-haired Cycad, (Encephalartos friderici-guilielmi), in the cycad garden at Kirstenbosch national botanic gardens in Cape Town. Cycads are dioecious, meaning plants are either male or female.
