Tx Senate passes cactus rustling bill

[Boojum1]

Perry vetoed similar bill in 2003.  

Senate bill takes aim at plant thefts
By JOHN MORITZ
STAR-TELEGRAM AUSTIN BUREAU
AUSTINForgive state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh if he sounded a bit prickly on Friday.

The El Paso Democrat was trying to solve a thorny problem plaguing the West Texas deserts -- namely, cactus rustling. It might sound like a dry topic, but the senator said it's one with sharp consequences.

"They are clear-cutting our cacti," Shapleigh said soon after the Senate voted unanimously to mandate fines and even jail time for anyone who poaches cactus. "A hundred workers can harvest 50 acres in a night. We're losing a very valuable part of our natural heritage, and it's a real threat to some rare and endangered cacti."

Here's the deal: Smugglers in freight-hauling trucks invade remote desert lands and load up hundreds of plants from dozens of species. Then they sell them for as much as $250 apiece in other parts of Texas, and in New Mexico, Arizona and California.

The plants' popularity is fueled by homeowners' desire for low-maintenance, water-sipping landscaping, said Shapleigh, whose Senate Bill 689 now goes to the House. And often the buyers have no idea that they're dealing in poached products, he added.

According to an analysis of Shapleigh's bill by Senate researchers, Texas' Chihuahuan Desert "is one of the most biologically rich deserts in the world, home to almost a quarter of the 1,500 cactus species known to science, including many species found nowhere else."

Clear-cutting the plants poses a serious threat to the region's fragile ecosystem by depriving the native wildlife of food and shelter, the study found.

If Shapleigh's bill becomes law, commercial growers and harvesters of desert plants would have to register with the state. Sellers would have to tag their plants; untagged plants would be seized by state inspectors.

Violators would face fines of up to $1,000 and up to 180 days in jail.

Gov. Rick Perry has vetoed similar legislation, saying it would discourage the water-saving landscaping method known as xeriscaping. Shapleigh said he hopes the new measure addresses concerns the governor raised at the time.

www.capitol.state.tx.us

John Moritz, 512-476-4294 jmoritz@star-telegram.com

http://www.star-telegram.com/226/story/84042.html

[SHANEA]

http://www.elpasotimes.com/election/ci_5770791

Bill penalizes cactus poachers
By Brandi Grissom / Austin Bureau
El Paso Times
Article Launched:04/28/2007 12:00:00 AM MDT
 
AUSTIN -- Pilfering desert plants for profit could mean punishment and penalties under a bill the Texas Senate unanimously approved Friday.
"We have unique Chihuahuan Desert heritage that deserves protection," said state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, who wrote the bill.

The legislation seeks to end so-called cactus rustling in Texas by subjecting people who try to sell plants yanked out of the desert to hefty fines and even jail time.

Because of the increasing popularity of xeriscaping, a landscaping method that conserves water, Shapleigh said, native plants such as barrel and rainbow cactuses are selling for a pretty penny. In states like California and Arizona, he said, a single barrel cactus could go for upwards of $300.

Cactus rustlers, he said, swoop into areas like Sierra Blanca and round up hundreds of plants to sell for big profits. Since Arizona and New Mexico have adopted tough laws against cactus rustling, Shapleigh said, the practice has proliferated in Texas.
Almost 100,000 cactuses worth about $3 million were shipped from Texas to Arizona from 1998 to 2001, according to a Senate analysis. Often the plants rustlers dig up are used by birds, bats and other animals for food and shelter.
"The Chihuahuan Desert does have one of the highest diversities of cacti species on the planet, so it's something we need to keep an eye on," said Kevin Bixby, executive director of the Southwest Environmental Center in Las Cruces.

Bixby said he has seen rustlers in action in his own Las Cruces neighborhood, though he and some neighbors were able to scare them off.

"They come out and just start digging up cactus," Bixby said.

Shapleigh's bill would require anyone who grows or harvests cactuses for sale to register the plants with the Texas Department of Agriculture.

The department would be able to stop the sale or shipment of plants not properly marked.

Anyone caught selling or advertising stolen plants would be subject to a fine of up to $1,000 and 180 days in jail.

For the bill to become law, the House and Gov. Rick Perry must also approve it. Perry vetoed a similar proposal Shapleigh made in 2003.

Brandi Grissom may be reached at bgrissom@elpasotimes.com;(512) 479-6606.
 

[Daryl]

Does anyone know why Perry vetoed the similar bill?

[rgibson]

Does anyone know why Perry vetoed the similar bill?

When vetoed in ought 3, Perry stated that he felt it was better to continue as b4 since leaving things the way they were would encourage more xeriscaping and alleviate need for more water.

Kinda conflicts with the attitude of allowing Steve Smith of Lajitas and friends to lease water rights on state lands throughout West TX and maybe pipe that water to the cities.

[Daryl]

When vetoed in ought 3, Perry stated that he felt it was better to continue as b4 since leaving things the way they were would encourage more xeriscaping and alleviate need for more water.

What a crock!  Rape the desert so a few city folk can get cheap, stolen cactus for their high end gardens.  I'm all for xeriscaping, but it should be done with cultivated plants, NOT wild plants torn from nature right after reaching maturity.  I see truck loads of yucca, ocotillo, etc heading up the highway nearly everyday.  Much of it stolen by trespassing cactus thieves.

[cactus boy]

This approach is legal, I guess, but no less depressing...

http://www.rangemagazine.com/features/summer-07/su07-thinking.pdf

[SHANEA]

A good day to be ovulating (if there is such a thing)

A good day to be ovulating (if there is such a thing)
Publish Date: August 19, 2007  |  Permanent Link
A little tale about protecting our loved ones -- the Flora of the Chihuahuan Desert by Kym Flippo

The other day, while ovulating, I and my husband passed a truck speeding down the South County Road. Anymore a speeding truck is not unusual on the South County Road, just annoying, but as it passed we noticed they had a load of cactus in the bed. My husband and I looked at each other with the same mouth-dropping expression. There was only one thing to do, and without words we agreed quickly: follow them!

Confrontation is not our style, nor is it the right thing to do, but neither is poaching cactus from the desert. I’d been ovulating for 2 days and I would like to believe natural instincts were kicking in. Just like a mama bear protecting her young, I had a maternal feeling to protect what I love – in this case, the desert. Off we went chasing the poachers down the road.

They stopped for gas at the Y (not the T. For those of you that don’t remember, this intersection use to be a T. Then when it changed to a Y, people got confused and were constantly going the wrong way saying, “Y, not T?”). We pulled in behind the truck and parked, still doubting our actions and trying to decide our next move.

We waited cautiously in the car to size them up. From our rearview mirror we saw two young boys between 18 and 21 standing next to a brand new pick up. They were of small build and, most importantly, looked very naпve. My courage grew. My husband asked, “What’s our plan?” Plan? What plan? I never thought about what we would do if we caught them. And then me and my ovaries were out of the vehicle.

Their truck was FULL of rainbow cactus, brown flower cactus, yuccas, ocotillo, pitaya and barrel cactus. Many of the cactuses had their roots chopped off and would never live. I almost started crying, but I couldn’t let my ovaries get the best of me. I needed to look tough and follow through with my hair-brained plan, of which there wasn’t one.

After spending seven summers as an interpreter in Big Bend National Park, you would think that I would have seen this as the perfect opportunity to educate these guys on the importance of leaving the Chihuahuan Desert in the Chihuahuan Desert. But as I was looking into their truck, seeing these beautiful desert plants uprooted for no reason but profit, I threw away my chance at an “interpretive moment.” My hormones shifted gears, my vision went red, and all I saw was a bull’s eye with them in the middle. You should never let your ovaries do your thinking for you.

“Where did all these plants come from?” I asked – a question about as brilliant as my plan.

“Oh, I have ten acres of land out there” answered the older of the two. He even threw in some creative arm-waving, vaguely indicating somewhere to the west. “I took them off my land.”

When I tried to pin him down about the location, he either wouldn’t or couldn’t tell me where the land was. Sensing that this wasn’t a friendly line of questioning, the guy switched gears and came back with “There are other people out here selling plants off their land.”

 “And that makes it okay?” I’m sure confirmed his suspicion that he was not dealing with a couple of friendly and curious tourists.

The comment that really cooked my goose though was when he said they were taking the cactus to California to sell.

My husband’s immediate response “That’s bull#@*&!” was followed quickly by my “Yeah, you’re going to make a bundle selling dead cactus!”

The conversation quickly went south from there, and shortly thereafter they just as quickly headed north (with the Sheriff I had called on their tail).

These kids didn’t have a clue that what they were doing was wrong. In fact, I believe they were proud of themselves, real entrepreneurs. (Or as my friend would have called them, “Ultra manures.”) There is no way they could have taken that many cactus, yucca and ocotillo from 10 acres of land. They had a large variety of desert plants all coming from different soil types found in different areas of the desert. Some of the cactuses they had do not exist where they were claiming their land was.

The truth is they were poaching and caught in a lie. These plants came from someone else’s property, and for all we knew it could have been yours. Did I handle this well? No, I didn’t. But isn’t that what ovaries do? Make you act out in ways you normally wouldn’t? At least I didn’t end up with a baby.

I would like to believe they now understand this is not acceptable behavior in our town, let alone on our planet. Did they learn anything? Probably not, but I hope they left with a powerful message: You don’t get to come out here, treat the land without respect, drive off roads over plants and animal homes, throw your beer cans out the windows, treat it like your personal playground, and leave with a truck load of the Chihuahuan Desert’s bounty.

As our area grows, more people will come here believing they can do as they please with the desert. It’s our responsibility to educate and remind people that we are all stewards of this land. We never really own it. But we should all be caretakers trying to preserve an amazing natural resource.

No one gets to come to this desert and act unconsciously and without consequences. Right or wrong, doing nothing would have been on my conscience and I couldn’t have lived with that. On this day, their only consequence was crossing paths with a desert-loving, ovulating woman and the man that loves her.
Kym Flippo moved to Alpine from Jackson Hole, Wyoming in 1983. Shortly thereafter, Kym moved to Terlingua where she took her vow of poverty. She has been a river guide, caterer, park ranger and now owns and operates Terlingua Creek Kennels.

The best thing to do if you come across someone you believe to be poaching plants or animals around here is:

1. Your personal safety is first priority. Don’t get yourself into a compromised position by confronting the suspects. Be observant and a good witness. If it doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t.

2. Time and details are critical. Make note of the vehicle description, color, model, license plate number and state, direction of travel, and physical description of any person suspected of poaching activity. Note time and location of the activity. Be specific about what you observed and what you thought the people were up to. If the information is detailed enough, it gives the officer probable cause to stop and interview the suspects.

3. Timely reporting is important. Let the proper folks know as soon as possible: rangers or dispatch at Big Bend National Park, rangers at Big Bend Ranch State Park, Brewster County Sheriff, and/or the land owner if known. Owners can press trespass or theft charges against someone even if the cactus or plants being removed are not protected by law. The state allows limited collection to permitted parties.  The proper authorities can access these permits.

What you see can make a difference in catching poachers. Just like a neighborhood watch program, the more eyes watching out the better.

[Boojum1]

This approach is legal, I guess, but no less depressing...

http://www.rangemagazine.com/features/summer-07/su07-thinking.pdf

I can see where thinning of prickly pear, some cholla, and even some yucca would be ok.  However, the article has photos of barrel cactus which isn't exactly invasive.  It would be of interest to see what species they actually harvest.

I do some collecting, I admit, but for me the challenge is to grow from seeds or segments...never would I take a whole plant unless it had already been plowed or was in the path of some development...and then it would be far better to just relocate.