In April 2022, South African officials at Cape Town International Airport intercepted a sophisticated wildlife trafficking operation when they became suspicious of cardboard boxes labelled as "toys" being exported to China. Upon inspection, authorities discovered not children's toys but 23,000 endangered succulents carefully wrapped in toilet paper. This wasn't an isolated incident – less than a year later, another shipment labelled as "mushrooms" yielded approximately 12,000 succulents packed in onion bags. These cases highlight the adaptability of wildlife traffickers, with one police investigator noting, "It never stops. You find out their one method, and they come up with another smuggling idea." The trafficking of these endangered succulents threatens biodiversity in regions like the Succulent Karoo, which spans South Africa and Namibia and is home to over 6,000 succulent species, 40% of which exist nowhere else in the world. According to TRAFFIC, an international wildlife crime investigation organization, more than one million illegally harvested succulents representing 650 different species have been seized in transit through southern Africa since 2019, with roughly 3,000 trafficked specimens intercepted weekly within South Africa alone.