Park Service goes high-tech to nab cactus poachers

Robert Macy

Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2000 | 4:59 a.m.

A technology that has been used to keep tabs on endangered desert tortoises is now being used to target poachers who swipe valuable plant life such as cactuses, yucca and Joshua trees.

The National Park Service hopes implanting tiny transponders the size of a grain of rice will help thwart poachers who dig up the desert plants for resale or for their own use.

Poaching has long been a problem for federal agencies, which have had limited success in combating the thefts.

"One of the things that led us to this is the need to have compelling evidence there has been a theft," said Park Service spokesman Bert Byers. "There was no way to do this unless we caught the poacher red-handed."

That will no longer be the case.

Employees and volunteers are now placing a new detection system called PIT - passive integrated transponders - in cactuses and trees on the 1.5 million acre Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

The tags contain a unique alphanumeric code that is recorded along with the plant's vital statistics, according to Alice Newton, a resource management specialist.

Scanners that detect the PIT can tell that a specific plant was taken from a specific area.

The scanners will be provided initially to workers in Arizona and Nevada, who can check plants in nurseries and those being transported to determine their origin.

Fines for poaching desert cactuses and trees can run up to $25,000, with imprisonment of up to five years, depending on the size, number and species of the plant material removed, Newton said.

"This sophisticated detective system is absolutely necessary to insure charges are upheld in a court of law," Newton said. "People who steal these plants are stealing from their neighbors and our children's children. This program will help stop the thievery."

The system is not new in the Lake Mead area. The same technology is used to help track endangered wildlife such as desert tortoises and Colorado River native fish.

It's not that we thought people were poaching the endangered tortoise or anything," Byers said. "It's just that we wanted to keep track of them."

This is the first time that the system has been applied to combat plant poaching in the desert southwest.

Most of the plants involved have a market value of hundreds of dollars. But they are also a vital part of the desert ecosystem.

Kent Turner, chief of resources management at Lake Mead, said it is understood the plants have substantial commercial value.

"However, they are even more valuable as the keystone species in the desert," Turner said. "As they become rarer, due to poaching or other factors, their significance to the system increases substantially."

Byers said he doesn't believe nurseries are involved in poaching, but some may have received plants and trees that have been poached.

"It will now be easy to call a ranger to have a scanner applied to the vegetation," Byers said.

Byers declined to say the number of trees that will be implanted other than "we're going to be doing it extensively."