by Kym Flippo
The other day, while ovulating, I and my husband passed a truck speeding down the South County Road. Anymore a speeding truck is not unusual on the South County Road, just annoying, but as it passed we noticed they had a load of cactus in the bed. My husband and I looked at each other with the same mouth-dropping expression. There was only one thing to do, and without words we agreed quickly: follow them!
Confrontation is not our style, nor is it the right thing to do, but neither is poaching cactus from the desert. I’d been ovulating for 2 days and I would like to believe natural instincts were kicking in. Just like a mama bear protecting her young, I had a maternal feeling to protect what I love – in this case, the desert. Off we went chasing the poachers down the road.
They stopped for gas at the Y (not the T. For those of you that don’t remember, this intersection use to be a T. Then when it changed to a Y, people got confused and were constantly going the wrong way saying, “Y, not T?”). We pulled in behind the truck and parked, still doubting our actions and trying to decide our next move.
We waited cautiously in the car to size them up. From our rearview mirror we saw two young boys between 18 and 21 standing next to a brand new pick up. They were of small build and, most importantly, looked very naïve. My courage grew. My husband asked, “What’s our plan?” Plan? What plan? I never thought about what we would do if we caught them. And then me and my ovaries were out of the vehicle.
Their truck was FULL of rainbow cactus, brown flower cactus, yuccas, ocotillo, pitaya and barrel cactus. Many of the cactuses had their roots chopped off and would never live. I almost started crying, but I couldn’t let my ovaries get the best of me. I needed to look tough and follow through with my hair-brained plan, of which there wasn’t one.
After spending seven summers as an interpreter in Big Bend National Park, you would think that I would have seen this as the perfect opportunity to educate these guys on the importance of leaving the Chihuahuan Desert in the Chihuahuan Desert. But as I was looking into their truck, seeing these beautiful desert plants uprooted for no reason but profit, I threw away my chance at an “interpretive moment.” My hormones shifted gears, my vision went red, and all I saw was a bull’s eye with them in the middle. You should never let your ovaries do your thinking for you.
“Where did all these plants come from?” I asked – a question about as brilliant as my plan.
“Oh, I have ten acres of land out there” answered the older of the two. He even threw in some creative arm-waving, vaguely indicating somewhere to the west. “I took them off my land.”
When I tried to pin him down about the location, he either wouldn’t or couldn’t tell me where the land was. Sensing that this wasn’t a friendly line of questioning, the guy switched gears and came back with “There are other people out here selling plants off their land.”
“And that makes it okay?” I’m sure confirmed his suspicion that he was not dealing with a couple of friendly and curious tourists.
The comment that really cooked my goose though was when he said they were taking the cactus to California to sell.
My husband’s immediate response “That’s bull#@*&!” was followed quickly by my “Yeah, you’re going to make a bundle selling dead cactus!”
The conversation quickly went south from there, and shortly thereafter they just as quickly headed north (with the Sheriff I had called on their tail).
These kids didn’t have a clue that what they were doing was wrong. In fact, I believe they were proud of themselves, real entrepreneurs. (Or as my friend would have called them, “Ultra manures.”) There is no way they could have taken that many cactus, yucca and ocotillo from 10 acres of land. They had a large variety of desert plants all coming from different soil types found in different areas of the desert. Some of the cactuses they had do not exist where they were claiming their land was.
The truth is they were poaching and caught in a lie. These plants came from someone else’s property, and for all we knew it could have been yours. Did I handle this well? No, I didn’t. But isn’t that what ovaries do? Make you act out in ways you normally wouldn’t? At least I didn’t end up with a baby.
I would like to believe they now understand this is not acceptable behavior in our town, let alone on our planet. Did they learn anything? Probably not, but I hope they left with a powerful message: You don’t get to come out here, treat the land without respect, drive off roads over plants and animal homes, throw your beer cans out the windows, treat it like your personal playground, and leave with a truck load of the Chihuahuan Desert’s bounty.
As our area grows, more people will come here believing they can do as they please with the desert. It’s our responsibility to educate and remind people that we are all stewards of this land. We never really own it. But we should all be caretakers trying to preserve an amazing natural resource.
No one gets to come to this desert and act unconsciously and without consequences. Right or wrong, doing nothing would have been on my conscience and I couldn’t have lived with that. On this day, their only consequence was crossing paths with a desert-loving, ovulating woman and the man that loves her.
Kym Flippo moved to Alpine from Jackson Hole, Wyoming in 1983. Shortly thereafter, Kym moved to Terlingua where she took her vow of poverty. She has been a river guide, caterer, park ranger and now owns and operates Terlingua Creek Kennels.The best thing to do if you come across someone you believe to be poaching plants or animals around here is:
1. Your personal safety is first priority. Don’t get yourself into a compromised position by confronting the suspects. Be observant and a good witness. If it doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t.
2. Time and details are critical. Make note of the vehicle description, color, model, license plate number and state, direction of travel, and physical description of any person suspected of poaching activity. Note time and location of the activity. Be specific about what you observed and what you thought the people were up to. If the information is detailed enough, it gives the officer probable cause to stop and interview the suspects.
3. Timely reporting is important. Let the proper folks know as soon as possible: rangers or dispatch at Big Bend National Park, rangers at Big Bend Ranch State Park, Brewster County Sheriff, and/or the land owner if known. Owners can press trespass or theft charges against someone even if the cactus or plants being removed are not protected by law. The state allows limited collection to permitted parties. The proper authorities can access these permits.
What you see can make a difference in catching poachers. Just like a neighborhood watch program, the more eyes watching out the better.
A strawberry pitaya in bloom (above) is a spectacular sight to behold. But digging up cacti or other desert plants without proper knowledge of the plant nor permission from the landowner does more harm than good – and often results in a dead plant. (Marlys Hersey, photo)
Rainbow cacti bloom for only a few days a year. These ones were transplanted carefully, tap root and all, from limestone soils about 100 feet away, to this garden (with same limestone substrate) in front of a home in Terlingua just west of the Ghost Town. (Marlys Hersey, photo)
