Meet a scientist tracking cactus poaching in the Atacama Desert

Pablo Guerrero has been visiting cacti in the Atacama Desert all his life, first on family trips to the coast of Chile and later as a researcher studying the impacts of climate change and poaching on the fragile flora.

The desert, which is the driest spot on Earth beyond the planet’s poles, can be so desolate that NASA uses it to test Mars rovers. But from an early age, Guerrero learned to spot the pockets of life hidden within the arid landscape.

Cacti, a smorgasbord of voracious shapes and showy flowers, easily became his favorites.

Guerrero began visiting the Atacama as a researcher in the early 2000s and observed the plants of his childhood with a botanist’s eye. Their ability to thrive in such extreme conditions impressed him, and he grew concerned about their ability to continue to survive as humans penetrated the desert.

“Meeting these plants, especially those facing conservation challenges, was almost an epiphany for me,” says Guerrero, now a botanist at the Universidad de Concepción in Chile.

Cacti in the Atacama are particularly vulnerable to disturbance. Many species live in just a few square kilometers. And in the drier desert areas, cacti depend only on fog for water. But the desert is getting hotter and drier, and in some places the fog is disappearing.

Human impact on the wilderness is also increasing. In Guerrero’s youth and earlier in his research career, the only way to access remote biodiversity hotspots was to trek across the desert on foot. As the mining and energy industries began to grow, more roads were built, turning hours-long commutes into quick trips.

Garbage now piles up along the road, Guerrero says. The once exploding spots feel lifeless, haunted by dried cacti peels. Because the desert is so dry, the remains are slow to decompose and remain for years. And many remaining cacti populations are few and far between.

“By comparing today’s populations with historical photos that a botanist has taken, it’s easy to see the difference in plant presence,” he says. “They are much less abundant now.”

In recent years, Guerrero began hearing from colleagues about more cacti being seized at the Chilean border. Interest in having cacti as houseplants increased worldwide – and so did cactus theft. From the American Southwest to South Africa, desert plants have been targets of plant hunting. Even distant Atacama was not safe.

How, Guerrero asked, was poaching affecting desert cacti?

He looked Copiapoaa diverse genus of cacti found primarily in the Atacama that has been “a hot commodity” in recent years. From his field visits, it was clear that many species were threatened, if not already close to extinction. In the most recent assessment, in 2015, 28 percent of Copiapoa species and subspecies were classified as endangered or critically endangered. But nearly half of the 39 known species and subspecies had not been assessed at all.

Guerrero first set out to correct this, using new evolutionary histories of species, careful maps and outside experts to reclassify Copiapoathe risk of extinction. The results were grim: 76 percent of all Copiapoa species and subspecies are endangered or critically endangered, dramatically more than the 2015 assessment found.

Guerrero then analyzed extinction risk factors such as landscape condition, human footprint, plant hunting and legal trade to see which factors were most likely responsible for the increased extinction risk. Copiapoa the faces. Climate change played a role, but poaching and trade clearly stood out as important, affecting nearly all critically endangered species, he and colleagues reported in October. Conservation biology.

“The situation is really bad,” says Guerrero.

Determined to help conserve Atacama cacti, he is researching what keeps them alive in the desert and collaborating on state and international efforts to document poaching. He believes that creating new conservation areas with greater biodiversity and training park rangers to identify rare cacti are essential.

But the rapidly increasing risk of extinction for the Atacama cacti alarmed Guerrero. “I fear for the future of some of these species.”