20 minutes ago
By Navin Singh Khadka, Environment correspondent, BBC World Service
When South African officials at Cape Town’s international airport came across cardboard boxes labelled as toys being sent to China they became suspicious.
China is famous for exporting toys around world – not importing them.
The boxes were opened for a spot check – and instead of finding the promised toddler’s cooking set or a board game inside, they discovered bundles of endangered succulent plants all carefully wrapped in toilet paper.
In total 23,000 plants known as conophytum were found in that consignment in April 2022, investigators with the Endangered Species Unit of the South African Police Service told the BBC.
The authorities had been on the alert after a courier company was nearly duped by the same ploy a few months earlier.
About a year later, the authorities at the same airport came across cardboard boxes labelled as mushrooms. They were also being exported to China.
When opened, they saw bags usually used for onions stuffed with succulents – around 12,000 pieces.
“It never stops,” said one police investigator. “You find out their one method, and they come up with another smuggling idea.”
Since 2019, more than one million illegally harvested succulents representing 650 different species have been seized by authorities as the plants transit through southern Africa to overseas markets, according to Traffic, an international organisation that investigates wildlife crimes.
It said that within South Africa, some 3,000 trafficked succulents are intercepted by enforcement agencies each week.
Driven by growing demand for them as ornamental plants, new markets are emerging, particularly across East Asia, with many
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