Hi-tech
forensics has been employed in the battle to save South Africa's rare
cycads. Conservationists have turned to DNA fingerprinting technology
that would be more at home in the crime lab of TV series CSI to track
the illegal trade in the plants.
Developed at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens' research
centre for Gauteng Nature Conservation, the technique
will allow authorities to take "maternity tests" of baby
cycads to tell whether they come from registered
"mother" cycads or those nicked from the wild.
It will also help authorities prove cases against
cycad smugglers in court.
"This is something totally new," said Michele Pfab,
senior nature conservation scientist at Gauteng Nature
Conservation. "We're hoping we can use this new
technology against the smugglers."
Pfab came up with the idea of DNA fingerprinting
cycads after hearing that it was being used to protect
endangered birds in the US.
Dr Gail Reeves, a molecular biologist at
Kirstenbosch's research centre, proved, in a five-month
feasibility study, that it could be done.
With University of Cape Town researchers, Reeves
showed that individual DNA fingerprints could be
extracted from one gram of a cycad leaf, or any part of
the plant.
The process was used to protect patents for hybrid
flowers for the cut-flower industry overseas, Reeves
said, and, in Hong Kong, to test whether shark fin soup
was made from endangered species.
"There's no reason why this couldn't be extended to
other endangered plants and animals," Reeves said. "In
some respects this was just waiting to happen."
The illegal trade in cycads is lucrative with most
plants ending up in gardens in Gauteng or abroad,
especially California. A 2m- high cycad can fetch about
R250 000 on the black market, according to Jaap Pienaar,
head of the special investigations unit at the Eastern
Cape Environment and Tourism Department.
In the 1990s, conservation authorities started
tracking illegal cycads through microchips inserted into
the plants in the wild. However, smugglers soon found
ways to beat the system, with some even X-raying stolen
plants, said Leon Lötter, head of compliance and law
enforcement at Gauteng Nature Conservation.
Lötter and Pienaar said it was difficult to fight the
smuggling as they had few law enforcement staff and
courts often let smugglers off with small fines.
In the past three months, two stashes of illegal
cycads - one worth R70 000 and the other R100 000 - were
confiscated in Berlin and Uitenhage, in the Eastern
Cape, and arrests made.
For Pfab and Reeves, the next step is to present
their findings to national and provincial conservation
authorities.
Eventually, Pfab hopes threatened cycads in the wild
will be fingerprinted. The technology might even lead to
the re introduction of young cycads back into the wild,
as the DNA test would help match cycads to their homes,
she said.
The Eastern Cape has the greatest number of cycad
species in South Africa, but the prehistoric plants also
grow in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Gauteng.
South Africa is home to 38 of the 297 species worldwide,
most of which are endemic to the country.
Smuggling had driven some species to the brink of
extinction, said cycad expert Dr John Donaldson who is
also Kirstenbosch's research director. There were less
than 70 of one Eastern Cape species left in the wild -
and only one wild plant of a particular Limpopo species.
"South Africa has signed the biodiversity convention
so we are legally required to conserve these plants,"
Pfab said.
" There are also aesthetic and spiritual reasons to conserve them.
They are our last surviving dinosaurs.
