Poaching is an issue that has caused some serious issues for endangered species because the harder something is to get, the more people are willing to pay for it. Cycads, a type of plant endemic to South Africa, are in grave danger of extinction. In August at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town, 24 of their cycads were stolen. While they can live for hundreds of years, part of the reason the plants are in such danger is because they grow extremely slowly.
There have been many attempts to track these stolen plants, but none have been successful on a large scale, until recently. Scientists at the University of Cape Town and at the South African National Biodiversity Institute in Pretoria have developed a method of analysing a plant’s stable isotopes to determine if they have been taken from the wild up to decades in the past. This is possible since the isotopes in nature vary from place to place and the plants take building blocks from the minerals in the soil.
Since scientists can now clearly determine where a plant has grown over the past decades, they can compare the chemical evidence to the potential poacher in question and determine the legitimacy of their story. The hope with the development of this new technique is that it will deter poachers from stealing more of these plants since the penalties are so large and evidence against them can be so incriminating. This is a great development for the fight to protect endangers species and is also a cool new way that old chemistry techniques are being applied in a new way.
Submitted by Victoria Ordeman
No comments:
Post a Comment