The Mission to Save Thousands of Endangered Cacti From a Mining Site

To the untrained eye, the clusters of tiny perennial succulents might seem unimpressive. When they’re not in bloom with bright-fuchsia flowers, the black-lace cactus tends to blend in with the dirt it’s rooted in. One chilly February day at a lignite mining site near Christine, Texas, about an hour south of San Antonio, I find myself wandering around with botanists, cactus lovers, and volunteers who are downright thrilled to be finding so many of these dusty little plants.“I’ve never done anything close to this scale. It’s a profound thing,” says Michael Eason, vice president of conservation and collections at the San Antonio Botanical Garden. His team has been charged with helping to save this endangered plant species before the land is mined. I don’t tend…

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