11 March, 2025

Martha Henriques When police knocked on the door of Andrea Piombetti in Senigallia, a town on Italy's north-east coast, they found an unusually large collection of cacti. As it turned out, these were rare, old plants from Chile's Atacama Desert that had been illegally removed – and could command an extraordinary price from collectors. The find culminated in the conviction of Piombetti and an accomplice in February this year. The way the case played out could help set a precedent for dealing with other instances of wildlife trafficking, as our reporter Sofia Quaglia writes. Plus: are woolly mice the first step back to a woolly mammoth?

THE BIG PICTURE How VR can change your view of nature Virtual reality can offer a close-up experience of remote habitats that few people might otherwise experience. Credit: HabitatXR This is Chestnut, a pangolin struggling to survive in the Kalahari Desert. She's part of a VR experience to immerse viewers in the extraordinary nature of this habitat, but her story is based on the life of a real pangolin that was tracked by scientists. Seeing nature in VR can be a powerful experience, but can it change our minds – and our actions – when it comes to curbing climate change and protecting nature? Read Becca Warner's story.

CLIMATE CONVERSATION  The $1m international cactus heist that led to a smuggler's downfall Italian police confiscated cacti worth €1m (£800,000/$1.1m) from an apartment on the north-east coast. Credit: Andrea Cattabriga Sofia Quaglia, Atacama Desert, Chile Despite the heat, we've rolled our car windows up to avoid the clouds of dust and debris seeping in. Then, after getting out of the sooty mining city of Antofagasta in Chile's Atacama Desert, Mauricio Gonzalez turns to ask me whether I know where we're going. ‌ I have no idea, I thought he was supposed to be navigating. ‌ "We're going to the jungle of the desert," says Gonzalez, snickering. ‌ Gonzalez is from the organisation Caminantes del Desierto (desert walkers), and he and his friend have volunteered to take me on a quest for the nation's rare, endangered Copiapoa cacti. A cactus enthusiast recently convicted of smuggling $1.1m (£800,000) of these plants has made several similar journeys into the desert over the past 10 years.

Adapted to extraordinarily harsh conditions, some these cacti can survive transportation across the world. Credit: Sofia Quaglia Copiapoa is a cactus with more than 30 unique species found solely on the coast of Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth. At first, I didn't get why everybody was so mesmerised by these succulents. And why they would risk jail to steal them. To me, they just looked like leathered aubergines covered in thick thorns. ‌ But after driving for hours into the desert, passing cliffs of stone, sand, dirt, sand, and stone again, I realised how incredible it was for a plant to be living here at all. We climbed hills and valleys of rubble and find hundreds of Copiapoa reaching out of cracks in the land in the middle of nowhere. In an ancient slice of the world where it might rain a few times a century, Copiapoa rely instead on the coastal fog. They grow imperceptibly each year, so a plant the size of my foot is likely older than I am. ‌ Prickly problem They are an emblem of resilience and adaptation to the edges of life on Earth. As such, they're prized possessions for cactus collectors worldwide, and studies show that illegal trafficking is one of the main reasons why more than three-quarters of Copiapoa species are at risk of extinction. ‌ My guides point me to patches in the ground where cacti have been hastily extirpated in past robberies. "They've got small roots, they're very easy to steal," says Gonzalez. ‌ We don't meet any cactus smugglers as we go over their tracks. But once at home, I tracked down the collector who's just been found guilty of one of the biggest Copiapoa heists to date. The case could change how wildlife crimes of this nature are dealt with in future.  ‌ Read my full story here.

CLIMATE QUIZ In the UK, which natural feature did a woman claim to marry in 2023? A. A mountain B. A tree C. A river Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter for the answer.

MORE CLIMATE FROM THE BBC The economic impact of India's early summer As temperatures rise, anxieties are building up at Indian farms and factories, with business plans upended. ‌ Keep reading >‌ Why detecting methane is difficult but crucial work Thanks to affordable methane sensors for ground-based detection, communities are getting a clearer picture of local leaks. ‌ Keep reading >‌ US lost a fifth of its butterflies in two decades New research suggests that butterfly populations fell by 22% between 2000 and 2020 – but there is still hope for recovery. ‌ Keep reading >‌

AND FINALLY... In its long-running quest to recreate the woolly mammoth, the US company Colossal Biosciences has made what it calls a big step forward – by creating a "woolly mouse". The mice were genetically modified to produce a thick, woolly coat. The company hopes that engineering an elephant to produce a similar coat would allow it to live in the Arctic tundra. The presence of large herbivores could help the permafrost from melting in a warming world by encouraging grasslands to thrive, the company claims, though their project has been met with strong criticism. "This doesn't seem to have a practical use or any real scientific value," said Helen Wallace of the campaign group GeneWatch. Read Pallab Ghosh's story here.