WSJ article on cactus rustlers.
February 25, 2003
Cops Can't Keep Up With Cactus Rustlers
As Desert Cities Try to Save Water, Poaching For Landscaping Causes Succulent Shortage
By JIM CARLTON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
CAVE CREEK, Ariz. -- Cactus rustling has become rampant all across the Southwest. Just ask the cactus cops of Arizona.
"See what I mean!" shouted Jim McGinnis, an Arizona cactus investigator as he pointed excitedly at a gaping hole in the desert. "This was a theft area."
Sure enough, faint tire tracks could be seen leading from the hole where Mr. McGinnis figures a giant saguaro cactus stood as recently as three weeks earlier. Nearby, he knelt to examine another apparent saguaro excavation, inspecting roots that seemed to have been severed with a knife.
High demand for desert landscaping has fueled an alarming increase in the removal of cactuses from the desert floor. Saguaros, hedgehogs, ocotillo and barrel cactuses all are being hauled off for replanting in cities. Some cactuses are also used to make candy.
Cactuses have long been a target of thieves, but not like this. The plant is so heavily plundered that law-enforcement agencies in five states have created special squads to protect it. The Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada even implants computer chips in certain cactuses to help track them down.
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The fishhook barrel cactus, a favorite among thieves.
In Arizona, where theft of cactuses valued at more than $500 is a felony, the black market for stolen cactuses exceeds $2 million a year, officials say. The state's cactus cops get at least one new case a month, often involving dozens of swiped succulents.
In the Chihuahuan Desert of West Texas and neighboring Mexico, nearly 100,000 cactuses with an estimated value of $3 million were ripped out of the sand between 1998 and mid-2001, according to a new report by the World Wildlife Fund. The report concluded that unregulated cactus harvesting is so prevalent in the Chihuahuan area that the region runs the risk of becoming largely denuded of cactuses.
Some states, including Texas and Nevada, allow limited cactus harvests. In Nevada, state officials say legal harvests of cactus and flowering yucca plants from state lands soared 60% in the 1990s. Add that to the mounting problem of poaching, and Nevada has a cactus crisis.
It all comes down to water, which cactuses need in very scant amounts. In recent years, desert cities such as Phoenix, Tucson and Las Vegas have pushed residents to landscape their homes with cactuses and other native plants in order to save water. Demand has boomed. Bach's Cactus Nursery in Tucson, for example, reports its cactus sales have tripled in the past decade.
"Those well-intended campaigns may be mitigating one environmental problem while exacerbating another," writes Christopher Robbins, author of the World Wildlife Fund report.
Cactus thievery pays. A single ocotillo, with its spindly arms reaching out, can fetch as much as $150 on the retail market, while mighty saguaros, which grow to more than 20 feet, can command as much as $5,000. Saguaros are expensive because they take about 100 years to reach maturity. Aside from Arizona, most Southwestern states still have weak cactus-conservation laws. Transporting stolen cactuses across state lines and stripping the plants from federal land without a permit is usually a felony, but U.S. officials admit they have few resources to chase cactus nabbers.
"There are literally tens of thousands of square miles of desert, and I've got 33 special agents for four states," says Gary Mowad, acting special agent in charge of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Albuquerque, N.M., which oversees Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma.
So many of the cactuses have been stolen, for candy-making and other purposes, that investigators have taken desperate measures. Three years ago, rangers at Lake Mead began implanting computer-ID chips into several varieties of cactus to help identify stolen ones. The measure was taken after land-management agents uncovered a case in which a local property owner had been taking thousands of cactuses from the million-acre recreation area over a period of years.
"You drive along any rural road near any urban area out here, and there is no cactus," says Randy August, a special land-management agent in Las Vegas.
Indeed, it was a property owner's shocked discovery that most of her saguaros had disappeared from her five-acre lot outside Phoenix that led state investigators to nab one cactus poacher. According to Arizona Department of Agriculture investigators, the poacher, 60-year-old Michael Christopher, falsely stated that he owned the plot when he filled out a permit required by the state for cactus removals from private land. They say he used that as documentation to sell 36 of the lot's saguaros to the local Desert Aura Cactus Nursery for $10,000 in early 2000.
At less than $300 apiece, that was a bargain given that saguaros can command $5,000. But nursery owner Sandy Schott says her suspicions weren't aroused. "He said it was his land, so you assume everything is cool," she says. With permit in hand, the nursery removed about two dozen of the saguaros before the actual owner of the lot, 65-year-old Ardy Sizemore, discovered what was happening and notified police. "I came out to show my daughter the sun setting over the cactus, and they were almost all gone," recalls Ms. Sizemore, a travel-agency worker in Phoenix.
To make matters worse, the violation was perpetrated by Ms. Sizemore's boss, Mr. Christopher, who owned the travel agency where she worked. Mr. Christopher pleaded guilty to felony cactus theft and was sentenced to probation and ordered to pay his employee restitution. Ms. Sizemore resigned.
Write to Jim Carlton at jim.carlton@wsj.com
Updated February 25, 2003
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