Opinion | SA’s silent biodiversity crisis is now organised crime

By Nqabiso Gantsho, Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Forestry, Fisheries and Environment

When most South Africans hear “wildlife crime”, they think of rhino horn or abalone. But in the last five years, another crime has exploded across the succulent Karoo, the mass poaching of our indigenous succulents. This is no longer a case of a few collectors picking plants. It is organised, transnational, and devastating. And if we do not act now, we will lose species forever.

The scale of the problem

Between October 2025 and February 2026 alone, authorities recorded 1,064,032 seeds and 8,642 plants illegally harvested in the Western Cape. Since 2018, over 2.5 million plants have been seized nationally. The targets are specific: Conophytum, Lithops, Tylecodon, Adromischus – tiny, slow-growing plants found nowhere else on earth. More than 40% of the world’s succulent species occur in South Africa, mostly in the Northern and