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		Nature Conservancy Magazine: Winter 2006 Nature Conservancy Magazine Restoration Takes Flight Up Close Minding the Gap Potomac BioBlitz Nature Stories Podcast Nature Landmarks Nature Books Nature Travel Nature Preserves Subscribe Previous Issues

Vulnerable Venus Flytraps

Venus flytrap at Green Swamp Preserve in North Carolina Photo © Harold E. Malde The insect-devouring flytrap, a North Carolina native, has been a target of poachers at Conservancy preserves. Illustration © Liz Pepperell Learn more Boiling Spring Lakes Preserve Green Swamp Preserve View a photo slideshow of carnivorous plants.

Conservancy Biologists Set a Trap to Catch Poachers

by Kathryn Brown

Two Nature Conservancy preserves near Wilmington, North Carolina, have become favorite targets for poachers, who snatch Venus flytraps while the carnivorous plants are in full bloom, their showy white flowers crowning slender stalks. The Boiling Spring Lakes Preserve has been routinely hit, but the nearby Green Swamp Preserve has seen the most significant offenses: In June 2005, thieves plucked thousands of Venus flytraps from Green Swamp in a single afternoon.

“Poaching is a perpetual, persistent problem,” says Dan Bell, the Conservancy’s project director for the region. The poachers sell the plants to local nurseries and roadside markets.

In response, the Conservancy and the state Department of Agriculture have launched a botanical sting operation: They are painting the roots of Venus flytraps in the two preserves with fluorescent orange dye. Absorbed by plant tissues, the dye glows under an ultraviolet-light scanner—a telltale blush that will allow state agriculture inspectors to spot stolen plants at nurseries.

Although Venus flytraps are sold nationwide, the plant’s native habitat is surprisingly small—only a 70-mile circumference around Wilmington. Here, living in the wet, boggy soils on the coastal plain, the flytrap evolved its bug-eating habit as a way of getting nutrients missing from the poor soil. “What’s rare is not the plant—you can buy commercially cultivated flytraps anywhere—but its protected habitat,” says Bell. “There are only six protected places in nature where Venus flytraps grow, and half are Nature Conservancy preserves.”

Because poachers in North Carolina must be caught in the act to be prosecuted (at a fine of $50 per flytrap), state nature preserves need a deterrent. In the 1990s, state inspectors began swabbing dye on wild ginseng in the Smoky Mountains, successfully tracing stolen plants. Using this model, Conservancy and state employees will continue painting flytraps annually. If successful, this colorful clampdown could provide a model for protecting other plants across the country.