Hey everyone! Hope you guys are doing well but congrats on almost completing the semester!

Before we move onto preparations for our final examinations, I really wanted to address this problem in what may be my final blog post! Plant blindness. Something that even I admittedly struggled with throughout my time writing my posts!

When you think of the illegal wildlife trade, what often comes to mind? Prior to research, for me, mammals are the first thing that pops into my head, and it’s no surprise if it’s the first thing that pops into your head too. Even a quick google image search will show the same thing!

The fact is, however, that plants are also some of the most illegally traded wildlife as well! Similar to mammals, plants are also illegally traded for their beauty and medicinal properties such as for TCM. In one year, up to 440,000 tonnes of plants are illegally traded for medicinal purposes! As you can see, this is no small number and this is due to the commercial trade of these plants accumulating throughout the years. Yet, despite these high numbers, there are still gaps that are yet to be addressed in the illegal wildlife trade of plants.

Cycads. Source: Pixabay

For example, cycads are one of the species of plants that have been significantly endangered by the trade. There is, however, very little research on this in the peer-reviewed literature (Margulies et al, 2019)! Similarly, this is the case for the illegally traded cacti as well (Margulies et al, 2019). This highlights a gap in conservation research for illegally traded plants. Indeed, a quick search on google scholar using the keywords “illegal plant trade” revealed that after the first few pages, only “illegal trade” results were shown focus on mammals. As this was a brief and search done like a novice like me, there could have also been errors and biases. This article, however, also did show that out of 256 peer-reviewed papers between 1996 and 2019, only 26 of which focused on plants.

This gap in addressing illegal plant trade in conservation is also likely to have influenced policy-making as well. Currently, imports and exports of illegally traded plants don’t tally and the trade is known to be at a much larger magnitude than what government statistics report (Phelps & Webb 2015). This inconsistency further underestimates the degree to which illegal wildlife trade threatens plant species. Thus, there is a pressing need for conservationists, policymakers, and other stakeholders to address plant blindness and make a conscious effort to include plants in their studies and policies as well!  I also hope, that through this post I have given you a glimpse of the illegal plant trade and that you too would make a conscious effort to remember plants as well when thinking about the illegal wildlife trade!

References

Margulies, J. D., Bullough, L., Hinsley, A., Ingram, D. J., Cowell, C., Goettsch, B., . . . Phelps, J. (2019). Illegal wildlife trade and the persistence of “plant blindness”. Plants, People, Planet, 1(3), 173-182. doi:10.1002/ppp3.10053

Phelps, J., & Webb, E. L. (2015). “Invisible” wildlife trades: Southeast Asia’s undocumented illegal trade in wild ornamental plants. Biological Conservation, 186, 296-305. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2015.03.030