# A cacti-smuggling case with a prickly end: the novel way courts are making poachers pay

C  
ile’s Atacama desert is one of the driest places on Earth, a surprisingly cool environment, sucked clean of moisture by the cold ocean to the west. This arid, golden landscape is home to many rare species of cacti, which attract professional and amateur botanists from around the world keen to make discoveries and experience the thrill of naming a new species.

But they are not the only ones prowling the sands: Atacama has become a hotspot for succulent smuggling.

The parallel market in plants  and rare cacti are in high demand. It is a lucrative cross-border trade. Individual specimens – particularly those that are visually attractive or interesting – can sell for tens of thousands of dollars.

But the trade has a huge negative impact on biodiversity, and has become the frontier of a novel legal approach to conservation: suing criminals not just for smuggling but to restore the wider damage they have done to ecosystems.

In February, Andrea Piombetti and Mattia Crescentini were found guilty of illegally importing and exporting cacti by the public prosecutor of Ancona in Italy. They were given suspended sentences of 18 months in prison and a €25,000 (£21,000) fine; and one year in prison and a €18,000 fine respectively.

Their conviction followed a  in 2020 – Operation Atacama – during which law enforcement agencies discovered cacti in the _Eriosyce_ and _Copiapoa_ genera at a home in Ancona and traced them back to Chile. These endangered species are particularly sought after by collectors.



The two men had posted the cacti from Chile to contacts in Greece and Romania, who redirected packages to Italy. The intention was to sell the plants on to a network of buyers across Europe and Asia. They also illegally sold cacti directly to customers in the US and Japan.

Piombetti alone had uprooted more than 900 cacti during repeated trips to the Atacama desert. Piombetti and Crescentini could not be contacted for comment.

## The difficulty is how to attach monetary value to a species? It should be proportional to the harm caused

### Lovish Sharma, Wildlife Trust of India

Blair Atwebembeire, an environmental lawyer in Uganda, is exploring similar lawsuits linking environmental and wildlife laws, to try to tackle poaching of pangolins – the . “Any remedy that looks at a deeper solution that restores the environment is key … as opposed to only looking at one animal that has been killed or one tree that has been cut down.”

Lovish Sharma, legal adviser to the  Trust of India and an advocate at the high court of Delhi, is trying to raise awareness of existing legal provisions in India that allow parties to seek compensation for damage done to the environment.

He says there have been some successful cases involving wild boar and deer hunting, although compensation was low. “The difficulty is how to attach monetary value to a species? It should be proportional to the harm caused. We are developing scientific reports which would be tabled before the judicial officers at the time of conviction, so that they have a better understanding of how to compute the damage.”



Conservation Litigation, which is keen to support these claims, wants to set a strong precedent that people who harm an ecosystem can be held responsible for restoring it.

### Rika Fajrini, of the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law

Rika Fajrini, of the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law, says Indonesia is one of many countries that approach wildlife trade violations primarily through criminal punishment, “which fails to make offenders bear the true cost of their crimes”.

“The Italian case highlights that harm to wildlife is also harm to the environment – one that requires restoration, not just punishment of offenders,” says Fajrini.

> The difficulty is how to attach monetary value to a species? It should be proportional to the harm caused. We are developing scientific reports which would be tabled before the judicial officers at the time of conviction, so that they have a better understanding of how to compute the damage.

This article was amended on 10 March 2025. Operation Atacama was carried out in 2020, not 2021 as stated in an earlier version.
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