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Poachers target South Africa’s ‘miracle’ plant with near impunity

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NIEUWOUDTVILLE, South Africa — It is the devil’s breath, this wind, blowing dry and mercilessly across a plain left threadbare by decades of overgrazing. With this wind at their backs, small groups of mostly men have toiled upslope, along historic shepherding paths to the top of an escarpment 600 meters (2,000 feet) high over the past year. They’ve been recruited by poaching syndicates to find one specific plant at the top of the plateau, hidden in a remote and rugged gorge. Clivia mirabilis, the miracle clivia. Most clivia species grow in shady, damp, woody groves. The miracle clivia got its name because it has carved out a niche on the arid, hot escarpment on the edge of South Africa’s western near-desert. The area has an unusual climate, with winter rainfall and summer temperatures that can climb to 45° Celsius (113° Fahrenheit). The plant can withstand the harsh sun, and its maroon stem and hanging candelabra-like blooms set it apart from other clivia species. The best-known populations grow in a single gorge in Oorlogskloof Nature Reserve, on the edge of the Bokkeveld Plateau in Northern Cape province, where the species was first identified in 2002. Private landowners on the border of the reserve are reluctant to say if the plant grows on their properties. This is wild, rugged country. When Mongabay visited the reserve in November, field rangers were called out to find two tourist parties that had lost their way on the paths whose signs had gone missing or been…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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