The CSPS Political Ecology Cluster invites you to

Book Talk: “The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Ex-tinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade” by Dr. Jared D. Margulies

📅 19 March
🕛 16.00-17.00, followed by drinks
📍 Leeuwenborch room 3011, Wageningen Campus

Cactus and succulent plants are a global phenomenon with unrivaled botanical popularity. Despite their iconic status, they are also some of the world’s most threatened species. Perhaps strangest of all, it is some of the plants’ most ardent lovers—cactus and succulent collectors—who many conservationists blame for threatening succulent species with extinction. This talk delves into the world of global cactus and succulent collecting to explore how and why some of the most passion-ate lovers of these plants engage in their illicit trade and what underpins their demand through an analysis of desire, care, and illicit acquisition. Drawing on multispecies ethnographic research across four continents, Margulies complicates common narratives of what motivates illegal succulent trade and their demand. He analyzes what binds rather than separates collection and conservationist urges, and what can be done to prevent species extinctions.