In August 2020, out of the blue, the owners of the 28,000-hectare Selati Game Reserve received word that a company called Tiara Mining had plans to excavate a series of open-cast pits on their land. The mining application was at an advanced stage, it seemed, which was strange -- no one from Tiara Mining had ever set foot on the conservancy. And so began a battle that would unearth a litany of contradictions.
Between the towns of Gravelotte and Phalaborwa in Limpopo Province, on an outcrop of low granite hills, grows a species of African cycad that is to be found nowhere else on the planet. The plant, listed under CITES Appendix 1 -- code for "most endangered," which means that 183 countries have agreed to afford it the highest level of protection -- is itemised officially as Encephalartos dyerianus, but is known colloquially as the Lillie Cycad. On the regulated market, as evidence of the extinction threat, a juvenile plant will set you back around R210,000.
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