Speaker 1: School of Humans. On March thirtieth, nineteen thirty, Howard Gates
Speaker 1: wrote a letter from the warmth of a campfire somewhere
Speaker 1: in the Baja California Desert.
Speaker 2: I see spines in my sleep. I have been down
Speaker 2: to the axle a dozen times in mud, stuck in sand,
Speaker 2: had to carry my load up grades, bumped over rocks,
Speaker 2: broke a universal joint in l Aornoso, and again on
Speaker 2: a hill. Been through l Purgatorio and down the grade
Speaker 2: into El Inferno. Turned the truck flat on its side.
Speaker 2: Been in perils on the seashore and mountaintops, under overhanging rocks,
Speaker 2: and leaning cardons between the living rock and deep pits.
Speaker 2: I drank water out of ruts in the road, forgotten
Speaker 2: what a bridge looks like, and been sick in the
Speaker 2: mooly hay. Trip has been wonderful.
Speaker 1: Gates was a cactus breeder, seller, and collector. Later in life,
Speaker 1: he'd become president of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America.
Speaker 1: By old age, people hailed him as Mister Cactus, but
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty he was just a guy who loved plants.
Speaker 1: Gates routinely flocked the desert to see his favorite specimens,
Speaker 1: sometimes risking his life in the world's most inhospitable climates
Speaker 1: to see them in the wild. And he wasn't alone.
Speaker 1: You may not realize it, but there's a world of
Speaker 1: cactus obsessives out there just like him. Consider Joelle Lode
Speaker 1: In past lives. He was a bank employee, a television actor,
Speaker 1: a librarian. But then he decided to do well, let's
Speaker 1: say bigger things.
Speaker 3: I went with my bicycles to go around the world.
Speaker 1: From his native France, Loday pointed his bicycle tires east
Speaker 1: and began peddling around the world. The trip would change
Speaker 1: his life. Cycling through the deserts of Turkey and Iran,
Speaker 1: he was mystified by the plants he passed along the way,
Speaker 1: charmed by their endurance and their ability to survive in
Speaker 1: such harsh environments. Later, biking across California, he'd have that
Speaker 1: same feeling when he encountered his first wild cactus.
Speaker 3: When I saw the first flowers on the cactai, I
Speaker 3: was really in love because the flower was so beautiful.
Speaker 3: In these desert where there is apparently nothing very nice,
Speaker 3: just snakes, scorpions as spies everywhere, But this flower were
Speaker 3: very attracting me.
Speaker 1: Lode couldn't help but get a closer look.
Speaker 4: I hadn't any signs in the fingers and everywhere in
Speaker 4: the body.
Speaker 3: So it is veryy painful, very difficult. But the flower
Speaker 3: are so wonderful, many many different colors, very exaggerated.
Speaker 1: From that moment, Lode was hooked. He bicycled across Death Valley,
Speaker 1: visited every country between Kenya and El Salvador, and dodged
Speaker 1: sniper fire and Yemen. He suffered heat stroke, encountered tomb
Speaker 1: raiders in South America, and was even deported out of China,
Speaker 1: all for the chance to photograph rare plants.
Speaker 4: I was in love with them, and I am still
Speaker 4: in love with them.
Speaker 1: Joelle Lode and Howard Gates are just two people out there,
Speaker 1: two people who have planned their entire lives around seeing
Speaker 1: their favorite plants in the wild. But there are many
Speaker 1: others with the same passion, and that love can be
Speaker 1: the fuel driving a meaningful, well lived life. But there
Speaker 1: is always a line, a line that divides passion from obsession,
Speaker 1: a hobby from a fixation. Sometimes obsession can blind you,
Speaker 1: It can make it difficult to see which side of
Speaker 1: that line. You're on. It can open a gateway to
Speaker 1: a life of danger and even a life of crime.
Speaker 1: From School of Humans and iHeart podcasts, This is Bad Seeds.
Speaker 1: I was browsing a store recently when a greeting card
Speaker 1: caught my eye. On the front was a pretty illustration
Speaker 1: of a cactus in full flower. Underneath it the words
Speaker 1: the desert works constantly to forbid it, and still the
Speaker 1: cactus blooms. I get it, it's one of those cheesy
Speaker 1: inspirational quotes, but you know what they're really is poetry
Speaker 1: and a cactus's spines, and it draws people in.
Speaker 4: This is a contrast between the beauty of the flower
Speaker 4: and the dangerousity of the plant. And this contrast between
Speaker 4: two things completely opposite are attraction to this plant.
Speaker 1: The cactus embodies the romance and grit of the wild West.
Speaker 1: It is rugged party. It stares adversities square in the
Speaker 1: face and dares to live in the world's harshest conditions.
Speaker 1: And not only does it live, it thrives, sometimes for
Speaker 1: hundreds of years. But put aside the romance, cacti are
Speaker 1: reclusive too. They sprout in far flung places, the sorts
Speaker 1: of locales that only in Indiana, Jones might explore.
Speaker 5: My first field trip to South America was in two
Speaker 5: thousand and sixteen, and I decided I wanted to come
Speaker 5: and say the cop be a part in Chile.
Speaker 1: That's Stefenberger, but a lot of people just call him
Speaker 1: the Cactus Explorer. He is crisscross South America on the
Speaker 1: hunt for some of the world's rarest cacti. The adrenaline
Speaker 1: rush of finding them, he says, can be like stumbling
Speaker 1: upon riches.
Speaker 5: It became kind of addictive. I mean, there's so many
Speaker 5: species defined, and some of them are quite difficult to access,
Speaker 5: and so it took me a long time to actually
Speaker 5: travel around and see all of the species. But I
Speaker 5: became really fascinated with how they survive where they do,
Speaker 5: and the ecology behind them and the story behind all
Speaker 5: of that. Living on the edge of the welds drissed Desert,
Speaker 5: the Ota Kama Desert.
Speaker 1: There's a book of photographs by the owners of the
Speaker 1: Cactus Store in Los Angeles called Xerophile, and it describes
Speaker 1: this pursuit beautifully. Cactus hunters, it says, are quote willing
Speaker 1: to spend months planning a trip across the globe, weeks
Speaker 1: driving town dirt roads, hiking across mountaintops, and riding on muleback,
Speaker 1: all the hope of finding that one habitat, that one
Speaker 1: plant they are seeking. Often they don't find it, so
Speaker 1: they keep looking, or return the next year, or never leave.
Speaker 1: It describes Burger perfectly.
Speaker 5: It takes a lot of internal motivation to actually be like, right, Okay,
Speaker 5: I want to plan a trip to Peru, and I
Speaker 5: want to go to this isolated mountain range, and I
Speaker 5: have to learn Spanish or you know, work out what
Speaker 5: I need to do to get there. And it's not
Speaker 5: always easy. It takes a lot of effort, and it
Speaker 5: costs a lot to go and see a lot of
Speaker 5: these plants and habitats. So you have to be really
Speaker 5: passionate about it and really genuinely interested in habitat any
Speaker 5: college or else, you just won't have the motivation to
Speaker 5: go and do it.
Speaker 1: It's that last part, the very real risk of failure,
Speaker 1: that makes cactus hunting more than just a peculiar hobby
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 5: The fun in it is it's kind of like a
Speaker 5: It's like it's like a parking moon haunt. It's like
Speaker 5: a treasure haunt. Set of thing. You know, you got
Speaker 5: looking for something difficult, you find it gives you a
Speaker 5: lot of satisfaction.
Speaker 1: For some, that satisfaction is addictive, and it can be
Speaker 1: taken too far. In the federal government, the US Fish
Speaker 1: and Wildlife Service employs criminal investigators, undercover cops who scour
Speaker 1: the murky underworld of wildlife crime in search of people
Speaker 1: who are well, perhaps a little too addicted. One of
Speaker 1: those investigators is Albert Gonzalez.
Speaker 6: I'm a special agent based in Opaso, Texas.
Speaker 1: By twenty fourteen, he'd been working as a special agent
Speaker 1: with the US Fish and Wildlife Service for nearly a decade.
Speaker 1: That September, Gonzales got a call from a Customs and
Speaker 1: Border Patrol agent in Denver. The agent had been surveilling
Speaker 1: a ring of plant fanatics in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Speaker 6: You know, cactus doesn't occur everywhere else. That's what makes
Speaker 6: it so sought after by the from Europe and that
Speaker 6: part of the world, because cactus doesn't exist there.
Speaker 1: These men, he said, had traveled many times to the
Speaker 1: southwestern deserts of the US, posting photos and GPS coordinates
Speaker 1: of rare cacti. This itself wasn't unusual. Many cactus hunters
Speaker 1: use this information to build their itineraries, a way to
Speaker 1: set travel plants. But the agent in Denver thought, this list,
Speaker 1: there's something fishy about this. The coordinates, he believed, were
Speaker 1: more than just a cactus nerd sightseeing guide. They were
Speaker 1: a hit list.
Speaker 6: Our ultimate goal is to protect our resources. Some of
Speaker 6: these species of cacti. There are so few left in
Speaker 6: the wild that any disturbance, any type of threat to
Speaker 6: them could make them go extinct. The thought process of well,
Speaker 6: it's just a plant, it'll grow back. In many cases,
Speaker 6: on some of these species, it won't. I'll never see
Speaker 6: it again.
Speaker 1: A few months later, a customs agent noticed that one
Speaker 1: of these collectors, a Slovak man named Igor Drob, was
Speaker 1: planning a trip to the American Southwest. He posted an
Speaker 1: advertisement online inviting other cactus lovers to join. Now that's
Speaker 1: when Special Agent Gonzales got the call. A group of
Speaker 1: five hobbyists Polish, Slovak, and Russian would be arriving at
Speaker 1: Lax soon. The FEDS would need to keep a close
Speaker 1: eye on them.
Speaker 6: We followed them through about six different states for a
Speaker 6: period about two weeks. Sometimes we would have to leap
Speaker 6: frog from one location to another. It was challenging to
Speaker 6: keep up with them.
Speaker 1: Everything that follows we know thanks to public court documents.
Speaker 1: At Immigration, the five men are questioned. They show officials
Speaker 1: they're a itinerary three weeks of camping with Stops and
Speaker 1: Joshua Tree, White Sands, Arches, Brice and Monument. Immigration waves
Speaker 1: them through, but not before an agent makes note of
Speaker 1: a paper they're carrying showing the GPS coordinates and the
Speaker 1: scientific names of cacti. One of the passports belongs to
Speaker 1: a Russian named Yevguina Safronov. In twenty eleven, he visited
Speaker 1: the US and made a similar road trip, posting a
Speaker 1: travel blog of his favorite plants. At Lax, the men
Speaker 1: rent a white Chevy Tahoe. Gonzalez notes the plate number
Speaker 1: seven ff X two three four and quickly alerts the
Speaker 1: National Park Service. Four days later, two agents find the
Speaker 1: vehicle outside of Benson, Arizona, parked on a dusty, desolate
Speaker 1: stretch of road. Years earlier, Igor Drob had visited this
Speaker 1: exact spot on a check website. He had recorded finding
Speaker 1: Mammillaria hedarei and faro cactus was Lendsieye. The little Nipple
Speaker 1: and candy Barrel cactus, respectively. The two special agents, dressed
Speaker 1: under cover, pull off to the side of the road.
Speaker 1: One steps out of the vehicle, and, pretending to be
Speaker 1: a fellow cactus hunter, approaches the men. The tourists don't
Speaker 1: seem bothered, squatting their faces pointed to the dirt. They're
Speaker 1: just too busy snapping photographs. One of the men is
Speaker 1: friendly enough to approach the agent and say that they're
Speaker 1: quote looking for flowering cacti. The agent smiles and nods.
Speaker 1: She's small talks discussing cacti and snakes before ambling back
Speaker 1: to her truck. She and her partner wait until the
Speaker 1: men motor off, a plume of dust rising behind them.
Speaker 1: When the area clears, the special agent steps out and
Speaker 1: begins scouring the landscape, looking for any signs of wrongdoing.
Speaker 1: In a place like Bens in Arizona, temperatures easily reach
Speaker 1: ninety degrees fahrenheit in May. In that heat, the exterior
Speaker 1: of a cactus will look mat and dry. But when
Speaker 1: the agents approach where the tourists had been tramping, they
Speaker 1: find a cactus, but it's shimmering under the desert sun.
Speaker 1: The cactus pads appear bright and moist, clear signs that
Speaker 1: somebody had sliced off a piece.
Speaker 6: Some plants, if they're damage like that, they die.
Speaker 1: The agents return to their truck and begin writing down
Speaker 1: case notes. The tourists had stolen a seed pod. This
Speaker 1: patch of desert is no longer just a great place
Speaker 1: for sight seeing. It's a I'm seeing. In the hyper
Speaker 1: obsessed world of cactus hunters, it's not unusual to use
Speaker 1: GPS coordinates to track down rare plants. The trouble, Steffan
Speaker 1: Burger tells us is when that information is exploited.
Speaker 5: When I went to Mexico, I was given some really
Speaker 5: known localities for certain types of plants, and it was
Speaker 5: just starkly obvious that plants had been taken from the habitat.
Speaker 5: I mean, you can see the holes in the ground
Speaker 5: for the habitats that I've been to many many times.
Speaker 5: You can see changes, you can see plants just basically disappear,
Speaker 5: and you're pretty much, yeah, you're just seeing holes in
Speaker 5: the ground with the remains of root systems kind of
Speaker 5: hanging out of the earth.
Speaker 1: For a cactus hunter, Lake Burger, who may spend lots
Speaker 1: of time and money traveling to see just one type
Speaker 1: of plant. This is frustrating. He recalls one time searching
Speaker 1: for a rare cactus in Mexico.
Speaker 5: When it was discovered it was highly poached. That was
Speaker 5: just flocks of people going there taking the plants, and yeah,
Speaker 5: it was more or less wiped out. It's very, very
Speaker 5: difficult to go there and find any plants.
Speaker 6: At all there.
Speaker 1: But despite the setback, he was still hungry to see it.
Speaker 6: I got put.
Speaker 5: In contact with someone, and the guy who gave me
Speaker 5: the information was like, he knows where there's another planet.
Speaker 5: It's not near the top locality, but you know, I
Speaker 5: must warn you that he is a poacher. And I
Speaker 5: was like, okay, well, look I really want to see
Speaker 5: this plan. And so he ended up going to this
Speaker 5: really kind of sketchy part of Tamil Leipis, which was,
Speaker 5: you know, it's got a reputation for me, just full
Speaker 5: on Cartel Marcota territory in Mexico, and we were just
Speaker 5: in the middle of nowhere, and this guy met us
Speaker 5: on the side of the highway on his motorbike and
Speaker 5: he was the poacher. He basically walked us through this
Speaker 5: kind of sclerophytic scrub land. I mean, we must have
Speaker 5: seen over twenty plants in about forty minutes or so
Speaker 5: walking around.
Speaker 1: It dawned on Burger that when it comes to cactus hunting,
Speaker 1: poachers are often a step ahead of hobbyists and scientists.
Speaker 5: I just couldn't believe it that we were actually seeing
Speaker 5: so many of this species and habitat because it's just such,
Speaker 5: you know, scarce information about it. It's so highly endangered.
Speaker 5: And I started asking him questions about how the poaching
Speaker 5: things work, you know, because I noticed there were some
Speaker 5: holes in some of the places that we went to,
Speaker 5: and he's, oh, they were the biggest ones, like the
Speaker 5: biggest ones. He had taken and sold them and he made,
Speaker 5: you know, for him a lot of money in Mexico,
Speaker 5: you know. And he was just like, Yeah, I couldn't
Speaker 5: believe ho much mine I made out of just something
Speaker 5: that grows in my backyard.
Speaker 1: Essentially, that's how so many of us see plants, at
Speaker 1: least when you're plant blind, just as some thing growing
Speaker 1: out in the backyard. And frankly, that kind of attitude
Speaker 1: makes rare plants easier to exploit, especially when you're in
Speaker 1: a rough patch yourself.
Speaker 5: He grows in such a poor part of Mexico on
Speaker 5: somewhere that's been just oh, you know, extorted by the
Speaker 5: nacos and stuff. And he saw the numbers declining after
Speaker 5: he was taking them, when he's like, oh, he expected
Speaker 5: the next year for that to be an abundant supply
Speaker 5: of cacti a game, but it's just not like that,
Speaker 5: because you know, they take decades to reproduce, and especially
Speaker 5: to grow and produce new plants.
Speaker 1: Berger realized that this poacher was just a poor guy
Speaker 1: trying to make ends meet, which was kind of hard
Speaker 1: to come to terms with because as a cactus lover
Speaker 1: and a cactus hunter, not that takes the wind out
Speaker 1: of your sails, like seeing the environment you love torn apart.
Speaker 5: It's great to see a lot of plants in localities
Speaker 5: and things like that, but if you see any kind
Speaker 5: of harm or destruction, it just kind of taints the
Speaker 5: whole experience. So, you know, that's what got me interested
Speaker 5: in conservation in the beginning, because I could just see
Speaker 5: the evidence there of the plants being exploited. Essentially, I mean,
Speaker 5: there's animals and insects that rely on that plant for
Speaker 5: a food source, for example. So they're part of a
Speaker 5: food chain.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: The pollen in a flower is right at the very
Speaker 5: very base of the food chain that supports us as humans,
Speaker 5: you know, and it comes from a plant flower most
Speaker 5: of the time. So they're parts of ecosystems, and taking
Speaker 5: them out of habitat is throwing all of that, of course,
Speaker 5: and reducing the amount of biodiversity out there.
Speaker 1: Coaching takes a toll. Cactive provide food and for at
Speaker 1: least twenty five species of wild animal, including deer and coyote.
Speaker 1: They're necessary for the survival of multiple pollinators, and they
Speaker 1: are a major habitat for ants, the food source for
Speaker 1: so many desert dwellers. Every plant that is ripped from
Speaker 1: the land hurts the survival of every species that relies
Speaker 1: on it. And these plants they don't grow back quickly.
Speaker 1: You may remember doctor Barberaketch from our first episode.
Speaker 7: When you do this, you basically affect the number of
Speaker 7: seedlings and new plants that are going to get into
Speaker 7: your population. These plants grow very slowly. Some plants, for example,
Speaker 7: like the sawara, they don't start producing flour until they're
Speaker 7: thirteen years old.
Speaker 1: And some species only grow in hyperlocal areas.
Speaker 7: As in many other cases of people getting obsessed with
Speaker 7: things is the rarity of them. These plants, like cactus,
Speaker 7: more than seventy percent of Mexican species are found in
Speaker 7: Mexico and nowhere else in the world, and they tend
Speaker 7: to occur in very small areas and sometimes also in
Speaker 7: very small numbers.
Speaker 1: With such small numbers, sometimes one poacher can wipe out
Speaker 1: an entire genus in one afternoon, and that's prompted scientists
Speaker 1: to become tight lipped with new discoveries, to act kind
Speaker 1: of like a botanical illuminati, guarding the secrets of the
Speaker 1: most vulnerable species. Here's an example. It's nineteen fifty two
Speaker 1: and a botanist named doctor Norman Bog is visiting the
Speaker 1: Crosby Hotel in Siouda Drecuna, a Mexican city across the
Speaker 1: border from Del Rio, Texas. There at the hotel, doctor
Speaker 1: Bog spies a tiny cactus growing in a coffee can.
Speaker 1: It's a pigmy sized specimen nested in pebbles. It resembles
Speaker 1: a cloud of brilliant white stars, a corona of Fuschia
Speaker 1: flowers with a Yoki centers. Doctor Bok's never seen a
Speaker 1: cactus like this before, so he asks the hotel's owner
Speaker 1: how she got it. She shrugs and tells a story
Speaker 1: of a mining prospector some guy who had found it
Speaker 1: while traping through the deserts of Coah Wheela. For a
Speaker 1: cactus expert, this was not useful information. Coaheela is the
Speaker 1: third largest state in Mexico. It's deserts are some of
Speaker 1: the most inhospitable parts of the country. But Bok thanks
Speaker 1: the proprietor, takes a few photos and vows to look
Speaker 1: for this new cactus. Little does he know he just
Speaker 1: committed to finding the holy Grail, because for the next
Speaker 1: four decades, botanists search and search and search. Two of
Speaker 1: the most dominant cactus hunters alive claim it holds quote
Speaker 1: undisputed first place in the Great North American cactus Hunt,
Speaker 1: but the desert is unkind. During one mission, more than
Speaker 1: fifty people fanned the sand together in search of the plant.
Speaker 3: No luck.
Speaker 1: For forty four years, the little cactus eludes discovery, and
Speaker 1: like any treasure hunt, failure causes most people to give up,
Speaker 1: but for a select few, the dead ends just fuel
Speaker 1: their desire to find it. Two men hell bent on
Speaker 1: tracking the plant down are botanist Jonis Luti and George Hinton.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety six, they started exploring the cattle farms
Speaker 1: near the Sierra del Carmen, close to the US border. There,
Speaker 1: among yucca and agave and lowing cows, they stumble upon
Speaker 1: the sasquatch of cacti and they make an agreement with
Speaker 1: one another they will keep the plants location a secret.
Speaker 5: When a plant gets discovered, the describing author has to
Speaker 5: put down a type, locality, and this can be really general.
Speaker 5: It can be as general as a certain state or
Speaker 5: province from a country. You'll find that there's a lot
Speaker 5: of cacta that have been described by somebody, but they
Speaker 5: haven't populations haven't been found since.
Speaker 1: As Paul Haxey rates in The Cactus Explorer, the discovery
Speaker 1: and subsequent secrecy surrounding its habitat had earned it a
Speaker 1: near mythical status for cactus explorers.
Speaker 5: In Mexico, plants and plant distributions especially is such a
Speaker 5: double edged sword. On the one hand, we want to
Speaker 5: know where these plants are so we can monitor them
Speaker 5: and introduce them into cultivation in ethical way, so people
Speaker 5: can have them. But you know, then there's other people
Speaker 5: who will exploit that information because these plants, as probably
Speaker 5: many people know, have become highly valuable, especially plants that
Speaker 5: are not common in cultivation or take a long time
Speaker 5: to reach mature. Do you like someone can take one
Speaker 5: hundred years to reach adacent size and it has really
Speaker 5: attractive characteristics that you can't replicate in cultivation. So having
Speaker 5: the information in the wrong hands can lead to exploitation
Speaker 5: of these species.
Speaker 1: And some secrets are doomed to be revealed rather than
Speaker 1: quell the search. The discovery of the plant called Luti's
Speaker 1: pin pushing cactus or Mammalaria lutii fan, the desires of
Speaker 1: obsessives cactus hunter's legal and illegal alike became more desperate
Speaker 1: to see the plant. Today, it's become easier to find
Speaker 1: Mammalaria luti in the market. Two legally cloned specimens spawned
Speaker 1: a cottage industry, with the little guys selling for around
Speaker 1: twenty bucks apiece, But in nature the plant remains rare.
Speaker 1: The only thing protecting the wild population from extinction is
Speaker 1: its very elusiveness. It would take only one irresponsible cactus
Speaker 1: hunter somebody willing to leak the GPS coordinates of the
Speaker 1: plant's location to risk this rare cactus falling into the
Speaker 1: hands of the wrong people, people like yev Guinea sophrona.
Speaker 1: About five hundred and sixty miles from the first crime
Speaker 1: scene in Benson, Arizona, the white Chevy Tahoe turns up again,
Speaker 1: this time at Big Bend National Park in South Texas.
Speaker 1: The area lays claim to some stunning vistas, towering rock cliffs,
Speaker 1: muddy dykes, the meandering Rio Grande. For ye have Guinea
Speaker 1: sifrona of Big Bend is familiar territory. Years earlier, he
Speaker 1: had visited the national park and had posted more than
Speaker 1: fifty photos online of the sites, but mostly photos of cacti.
Speaker 1: Little does he know a federal agent is tailing. Here's
Speaker 1: Special Agent Albert Gonzalez again.
Speaker 6: It was challenging because in many areas that we were
Speaker 6: attempting to watch them, it was just them. A wide
Speaker 6: open field and it was just them, so we had
Speaker 6: to be cognisant of that. We kept our distance. It
Speaker 6: was a shot in the dark because many times we
Speaker 6: weren't in a position to have up close visual surveillance
Speaker 6: on them.
Speaker 1: On Maverick Road near Rattlesnake, mountain, a ranger finds their
Speaker 1: car and follows them deeper into the desert. Now Big
Speaker 1: Bend is larger than the state of Rhode Island, it's
Speaker 1: an easy place to hide, so from a high point,
Speaker 1: the ranger watches the men through a pair of binoculars.
Speaker 1: From a distance, he sees them examining the ground, but
Speaker 1: he can't quite make out exactly what they're doing, so
Speaker 1: he waits. When the tahoe tears away, the ranger descends
Speaker 1: onto a patch of a Puntia humafusa, or prickly pear cacti.
Speaker 1: The prickly pear is a flat and fleshy cactus with
Speaker 1: eye popping pink flowers. It resembles a mound of discarded
Speaker 1: ping pong paddles, and its fruit you may be familiar with,
Speaker 1: tastes a bit like watermelon flavored bubblegum, and although a
Speaker 1: prickly pear is in margaritas and other foods, it is
Speaker 1: illegal to remove from federal land like Big ben National Park.
Speaker 1: So the ranger follows a tire tracks and their footprints
Speaker 1: until he comes upon a prickly pear, and, like the
Speaker 1: agents in Arizona, he finds the same bright sheen of
Speaker 1: a freshly injured cactus. The ranger gets back in his
Speaker 1: car and tries to catch up with the tahoe. Later
Speaker 1: that night, as the sun skates the horizon, the ranger
Speaker 1: pitches a tent at the same campsite as the tourists
Speaker 1: and begins to secretly snap photos of his neighbors. He
Speaker 1: grabs a shot of that slip of paper with GPS
Speaker 1: coordinates he watches as you be Guinea Siffronov knife in hand,
Speaker 1: stuffs the pad of a prickly pair into an empty
Speaker 1: box of Uncle Ben's rice.
Speaker 7: As J.
Speaker 1: Weston Pippen reports in the Atlantic that ranger would do
Speaker 1: more than surveil their every move under the cover of darkness.
Speaker 1: He would slink toward their vehicle. He'd bend down as
Speaker 1: if tying a shoe, and then quietly stick a GPS
Speaker 1: tracker under their car. Satellites follow the men's every move.
Speaker 1: Now soon the GPS shows them in Utah, exploring Arches
Speaker 1: National Park, where special agents are waiting. They watch the
Speaker 1: men wander a trailhead, occasionally bending over as if they
Speaker 1: keep dropping some but when the agents comb the site,
Speaker 1: they find a hole an entire prickly par cactus has
Speaker 1: been uprooted.
Speaker 6: One of the requests that we had from the US
Speaker 6: Attorney's Office was if we had the opportunity to approach
Speaker 6: them in a normal encounter, you know, to make them
Speaker 6: aware that taking anything out of a national park is
Speaker 6: against federal law. At one of the national parks, we
Speaker 6: were able to arrange a contact with the park rangers
Speaker 6: to talk with them casually saying, you know, hey, we
Speaker 6: realize you're here visiting. You may not be aware of
Speaker 6: our laws, but it is illegal to take anything out
Speaker 6: of the national parks. You can look, but don't touch,
Speaker 6: don't remove. They acknowledged that they understood that, so they.
Speaker 1: Were made aware, and even with this awareness, the tourists
Speaker 1: continue to pluck the plants from the parks. The Feds
Speaker 1: have seen enough that Juna lax. The men are at
Speaker 1: the Aeroflot check in desk bound for Moscow. Special agents
Speaker 1: with the US Fish and Wildlife Service are waiting for them.
Speaker 1: They open and search the men's luggage. In Sofronov's bag,
Speaker 1: they discover thirty four cacti, twenty five cactus fruits, and
Speaker 1: thirty six cactus seed packs. The specimens are stuffed in
Speaker 1: nylon stockings, in trail mix containers, and even an old
Speaker 1: bag of Crispy creams, and of course that one in
Speaker 1: a box of Uncle Ben's. Their loot runs the gamut,
Speaker 1: cotton top, hedgehog, turk's head, and fish hook cactus, among
Speaker 1: many others. Sofronov seems to have the whole desert in
Speaker 1: his suitcase, all of it illegal now. According to Convention
Speaker 1: seventeen of the International Trade and Endangered Species of Wild
Speaker 1: Fauna and Flora better known as Sydie's many of these
Speaker 1: plants are listed as Appendix two. That is, at risk plants,
Speaker 1: it's illegal to harvest them without a permit, doubly so
Speaker 1: on federal property. Sophronov is sauntering down the Arrow flot
Speaker 1: jetway when police catch up to him. Officials ask if
Speaker 1: he has any plants on him, and he shakes his head.
Speaker 1: After pressing, he admits that he had packed some pine cones.
Speaker 1: The police press harder, Sophronov starts to sweat. Finally he breaks.
Speaker 1: He admits that he had no permits for the sixty
Speaker 1: plus cacti hidden in his luggage. Customs and Border Patrol
Speaker 1: escort him out of the airport. He's detained and his
Speaker 1: passport is confiscated. Months later, Sophrona pleads guilty before a
Speaker 1: magistrate judge. His crime carries a recommendation of up to
Speaker 1: six months in jail, but instead of serving hard time,
Speaker 1: he's fined five hundred and twenty five dollars. So yeah,
Speaker 1: anti climactic, huh. All that detective work, all that following
Speaker 1: Sophrona around North America and for what a slap on
Speaker 1: the wrist. That's the problem we're facing because these mild
Speaker 1: penalties detern nobody. They don't stop obsessives, and as we'll
Speaker 1: soon learn, they don't stop organized criminals, mobsters, cartels, and
Speaker 1: government leaders from dipping their toes into plant crime either.
Speaker 1: Coming up the session defined rare Plants leads one of
Speaker 1: our guests to stare down the barrel of an AK
Speaker 1: forty seven.
Speaker 3: These figures just ran to us, all their machine guns,
Speaker 3: bandanas on their heads, and obviously not recommending the experience
Speaker 3: because you know you're gonna die.
Speaker 1: I'm Summer rain Oaks. Join us again next time for
Speaker 1: Bad Seeds. Bad Seeds is a production of School of
Speaker 1: Humans and iHeart Podcasts. I'm your host Summer rain Oaks.
Speaker 1: Lucas Riley is our writer, Gabby Watts is our producer,
Speaker 1: and Amelia Brock is our senior producer. Fact Checking is
Speaker 1: by Savannah Hugily and Zoe Farrow. Original music is by
Speaker 1: Claire Campbell. Sound design and scores by Jesse Niswanger. Development
Speaker 1: was by Brian Lavin and Jacob Selzer. Special thanks for
Speaker 1: a voice actor Mike Coscarelli. Our show art is by
Speaker 1: Pam Peacock. Executive producers are Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley, Brandon Barr,
Speaker 1: Virginia Prescott and Jacob's Elser.
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