Jared Margulies: Succulent collection and extinction from the illicit trade
Green Dreamer: Seeding change towards collective healing, sustainability, regeneration
kaméa chayne
4.9 • 661 Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2024
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
“What we’re talking about are plants that people desire for ornamental collection and will oftentimes go to great lengths to get them. Sometimes, that desire leads to conservation problems, and sadly… in the worst-case scenario, the extinction of an entire species.”
Where does cacti and succulent life fit within the realm of illegal/illicit wildlife trade? What conversations might arise when we include them in a wider picture of political ecology and colonial histories? And how might the entanglement of desire, care, and conservation complicate trends of in-vogue succulent and cacti collecting?
Join us in this episode with our guest Jared Margulies, author of The Cactus Hunters, as we delve into prickly themes of globalized trade networks, desire, and preservation.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, this is your host, Kamea. I hope you had a restful holiday season and that your start to this new year has been all of the things that you might need during this time. |
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| 1:04.1 | forms of support you're able to share with us. For now, enjoy the show. So for instance, right now, we're seeing major issues with illegal succulent harvesting in, say, |
| 1:15.1 | Southern Africa and also in Eastern Africa. And largely this has to do with sort of changing |
| 1:19.9 | popularity and aesthetic tastes and what kinds of plants are really popular within the |
| 1:23.7 | ornamental trade. But a lot of those species right now we're seeing are being really, really heavily hit by illegal harvesting. And some of those species have actually |
| 1:31.4 | already been harvested to extinction in the wild, unfortunately. |
| 1:36.8 | You're listening to Green Dreamer, and I'm your host, Kamea Shane. Today we are speaking with Dr. |
| 1:43.5 | Jared Margulis, an assistant professor in the Department |
| 1:47.1 | of Geography at the University of Alabama, whose work engages across more than human geographies, |
| 1:53.6 | political ecology, and the geo-humanities. Jared's new book, The Cactus Hunters, Desire and |
| 1:59.7 | Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade |
| 2:02.1 | Explores the Explosive Illegal Trade in Succulents and the Passion That Drives It. |
| 2:08.0 | He begins here by offering a backdrop of what the illegal trade in succulents looks like. |
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