Peak Cactus: Can Microchips Thwart Cailf. Urban-Landscaping Thieves?
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 09. 2.08
Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times
A few years ago the City of Palm Desert, Calif. gave up on lawns and started converting to indigenous plants that could survive without water. Landscape manager Spencer Knight says "The city decided to stop apologizing for the desert and said, 'We live in the desert; it is what it is ".
Unfortunately, the golden barrel cacti are expensive, and now fetch as much as eight hundred bucks. They have shallow roots and are easy to dig up, so thieves started pulling them out.
So now they are sticking microchips in them.
Recovered cacti
David Kelly writes in the LA Times:
The problem is so bad that surveillance cameras have gone up near large concentrations of cactuses in urban landscaping, and authorities expect to implant microchips into the barrels soon to track their whereabouts.
"Each microchip has a scannable bar code that tells who owns it," said Police Lt. Frank Taylor. "The odds are that we won't microchip every plant, but it will have a deterrent effect." LA Times See also ::The Press Enterprise
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People are stealing cacti. Excuse me while I process that a minute.
I suppose that if human feces had a high enough value people would steal that as well. *rolls eyes* My faith in the general goodness of people is becoming dangerously thin.
Capitalism does that sometimes. =/
Idleness and a bad upbringing more than capitalism, IMHO.
Rgds
Damon
I suppose you could dig a hole, pour concrete and chain them in place. The materials for that wouldn't cost too much to protect your $800 investment...
@Jikki
In socialism and communism the government is the thief.
You don't have to be a socialist to want to protect the environment. The fact that so many are turns off lots of people who would be natural allies for environmentalists away from good causes.
the word peak has been beaten stabbed and shot to death