Latest news with #Saguaros
Boston Globe
10-07-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
These toads have psychedelic powers, but they'd prefer to keep it quiet
'In just over a decade, we've put this species at risk of extinction in the name of healing and expansion of consciousness,' said Anny Ortiz, clinical therapeutics lead at the Usona Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Madison, Wis., that focuses on psychedelic drugs for medical use. Combined with habitat loss and other anthropogenic threats like climate change, 'widespread toad abuse' is creating a 'triple whammy for the species,' she said. Scientists chemically identified the psychedelic compound 5-MeO-DMT in Sonoran Desert toad secretions in 1967. However, until recently, few people bothered the amphibians or were aware of their psychedelic properties. That changed in 2014, Ortiz said, when U.S. media outlets and others began publicizing the fact that the toad's dried secretions could be smoked to induce a brief but intense high. Advertisement Many of these accounts also perpetuated a false narrative that 'toad medicine' was an ancient practice of Indigenous tribes living in the Sonoran Desert, but no evidence supports this claim, said Ortiz, who conducted research on the molecule as part of her dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Advertisement But as stories about the drug spread, 5-MeO-DMT became an increasingly popular for-profit offering by self-described shamans, new-age healers, and underground practitioners around the world. 'Toad churches,' where people could go to smoke the compound, also began popping up around the United States, including in California, Minnesota, Texas, Wisconsin, and other states. Saguaros grow in Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Ariz. CASSIDY ARAIZA/NYT In the United States, 5-MeO-DMT is mostly banned as a Schedule I controlled substance, defined as having no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. But some groups secured a legal carve-out under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by declaring the drug a sacrament, Ortiz said. To supply the growing market, more and more foreigners began showing up in Mexico, asking for toads, said Ortiz, who grew up in the area. 'This led to locals seeing it as an economic commodity.' Many Mexican ranchers now amass toads, keeping them in buckets and bags to sell to foreigners to take back home. The animals suffer 'appalling' injuries and stress from being kept in captivity and repeatedly milked for their secretions, Ortiz said. The species currently has no protections in Mexico and is listed as being of 'least concern' on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species. Ortiz feared that the pressure on the toads was creating a serious new threat, though, so she reached out to Georgina Santos-Barrera, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, to collaborate on a conservation assessment. Between 2020 and 2024, they conducted annual nocturnal visits to nine sites in Sonora state and one in Chihuahua. In total, they found an estimated 400 adult toads and 2,000 juveniles. At least three major populations seemed to have disappeared, and several others appeared to be in serious decline. Advertisement The toads the researchers did find were also significantly smaller than ones observed in years past. This is concerning, Ortiz said, because large toads have the greatest reproductive capacities. 'The right conditions were there,' she said. 'But the big specimens were just gone.' Sonoran Desert toads, which are also known in the United States as Colorado River toads, play key roles as both predators and prey. As the population declines, 'I'm sure we'll observe big ecological problems,' Santos-Barrera said. Already, she and Ortiz have heard anecdotal evidence that crop-eating insects have surged in recent years. 'The toads are not there, so these bugs are not being kept in check,' Ortiz said. Once their findings are published, Santos and Ortiz plan to ask the International Union for Conservation of Nature to adjust the toad's conservation status. They hope this will also lead to Mexico issuing national protection for the species. The United States has already nominated the Sonoran Desert toad to be subject to international trade regulations under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. It will be voted on in November. But protections and trade regulations can only go so far, Ortiz said. What is really needed, she went on, is to persuade psychedelic users to turn away from toads. Synthetic 5-MeO-DMT, identical to the natural version, is available, Ortiz said. The molecule can also be extracted from certain plants. Yet many practitioners insist that toad-derived secretions are preferable because they are natural, Ortiz said. Some also insist that the secretions contain other chemicals that contribute to the drug experience. Advertisement In fact, the other compounds the toads produce are cardiotoxins with no mind-altering properties, according to Ortiz. 'There's no added benefit for using secretions,' she said.
Winnipeg Free Press
02-07-2025
- General
- Winnipeg Free Press
In Arizona borderlands, a sacred saguaro harvest marks the Tohono O'odham's new year
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Cousins Tanisha Tucker Lohse and Maria Francisco set off from their desert camp around dawn on most early summer days, in search of ripe fruit from the towering saguaro cactus, an icon of the Southwest that is crucial to the Tohono O'odham Nation's spirituality. One plucks the small, thorn-covered fruits called 'bahidaj' with a 10-foot-long (3-meter-long) stick made with a saguaro rib as the other catches them in a bucket. The harvest ritual is sacred to the O'odham, who have lived for thousands of years in what are now U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and it's enjoying a renaissance as many seek to protect their traditional way of life. The fruit collected in late June is central to annual summer rain ceremonies, which mark the New Year. The laborious, weekslong harvest process also reinforces crucial connections to the Creator, the natural environment and fellow O'odham across generations. 'I feel like I'm surrounded by all the people that were here before us, all the ancestors,' Francisco said in a desert wash lined with saguaros, flowering creosote bushes and spiny cholla cacti. 'We talk about them constantly when we're out here.' Foremost for the cousins' extended family is 'Grandma Juana.' In the 1960s, elder Juanita Ahil campaigned to preserve their access to the harvesting camp in the foothills west of Tucson after the land became part of Saguaro National Park. Tucker Lohse's late mother, Stella Tucker, carried on the harvesting tradition that's now organized by the two cousins. 'I'm taking on a big responsibility, a big legacy,' said Tucker Lohse, who brought her 4-year-old daughter along this year. 'My mom knows we're still here.' The saguaro and its spiritual story Saguaros are the iconic plant of the Sonoran Desert, a land straddling the border between Arizona and Sonora, Mexico, that's surprisingly lush even though it receives less than 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain yearly and summer temperatures routinely soar above 100 (38 degrees Celsius). The treelike cacti start to produce fruit at 30 years old, then sprout their trademark arms around 75 and live up to 200 years. Most of the fruit is near the top, which can be more than four times the average person's height, so the fruit of the tallest can be beyond their reach. They're an essential shelter and food source for desert creatures from mice to wrens, which is why harvesters — traces of whose camps date back to the 1500s — never pick them clean, Tucker Lohse said. 'We don't look at land and animals as a resource — we create a relationship,' she said, echoing perspectives shared by Indigenous people across North and South America. For the O'odham, the saguaros, or 'ha:sañ' in their language, provide far more than food, tools and shelter material — they're family. 'Ha:sañ to us are like people, and we respect them that way,' said Silas Garcia, Francisco's partner. He started harvesting as a child with his aunt on the O'odham reservation, which is one of the largest in the United States. Garcia said there is a specific creation story about the saguaros — though like many stories sacred to Native Americans, it cannot be told in summer — and their spiritual presence makes the harvest central to the O'odham. 'It's being reconnected to the desert, to who I am, to where our stories talk about where we come from as a people,' Garcia said as he built a mesquite wood fire to boil the sugary fruit pulp into syrup. From saguaro fruit to New Year's wine Starting in May, O'odham families check the saguaro buds. The fruit is usually ripe by mid-June, opening a one-to-four week harvesting window until the fruit is spoiled by the first summer monsoons. After picking the first fruit, harvesters praise the Creator, believed to reside in a nearby mountain peak, the Baboquivari, that has been the site of many rescues of migrants who tried to evade U.S. border authorities. Then they bless themselves with some of the pulp, often making a cross-like sign over their foreheads and hearts — for some, a reference to Christian beliefs many O'odham also embrace. They taste it and thank the saguaro for providing for them. When it's cut open — using the saguaro's dried-up flower as a knife and leaving the pods by the saguaro for animals — the fruit is the color of a ripe watermelon. It changes shades from fuchsia to blood red as it's processed at camp. After the pulp is boiled for about an hour, it's strained to remove any debris, fiber and seeds. The latter two are collected into patties that, after being dried in the relentless sun, make natural pectin for saguaro jam. Then the juice is cooked again, reducing it to a syrup, and its flowery, caramel-like smell pervades the camp. Since the syrup is one-tenth the quantity of the harvested fruit pulp, it takes a pair of harvesters about 10 hours in the desert to get enough to make 64 ounces (1.9 liters) of syrup. Finally, a bit of syrup is mixed with water and left to ferment to make wine for Nawait I'i. That's the dayslong ceremony in which O'odham pray together to their Creator to keep sending the monsoon rains that make it possible to plant traditional crops like beans, squash and corn. The resurgence of traditional ways of life For many Native Americans, losing access to land, natural cycles of agriculture and the local foods that sustained them for centuries has meant spiking rates of diabetes, alcoholism and other diseases that disproportionately plague their communities. Too many elders lost their lives this way, putting at risk their language and traditions and more of their land. 'I watched them slowly pass away and no one took over,' Tucker Lohse said. That's why she, Francisco and others push to teach youth about saguaro harvesting and other practices. 'I'm really proud Maria has picked it up,' said Francisco's mother, Josephine Ramon, adding that she's relearning some traditions she was taught as a child from her daughter. Ramon said she regrets not teaching the language to younger family members who lived off the reservation, as about one third of the nation's 30,000 members do. City living also distances many from heirloom crops, which the Indigenous-run San Xavier Co-op Farm just south of Tucson is trying to regenerate, said one of its managers, Amy Juan, who harvests near the cousins' camp. 'With everything we do, there's a teaching of some sort,' added Garcia, who said he's encouraged by programs on the reservation and beyond that help youth connect to their ancestral culture. Francine Larson Segundo, who also harvests nearby, said her grandparents taught her about planting and caring for the saguaro. 'They're people, and they are our people, and when we're gone, one will take our place,' she said after picking the fruit for nearly two hours. 'Anybody that's younger than me, I have a responsibility to teach as much as I can.' Francisco's aunt Helen Ramon, widely known as 'Grandma Helen,' stopped by. She's especially adamant about instilling in youth the need to treat the natural environment with the same respect due to fellow beings. 'They need to carry on our traditions,' she said. 'We can't lose our ways of being Native.' ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Arizona and the Sonoran Desert's iconic Saguaro cacti are dying at intense rate due to extreme heat
The Brief The iconic Saguaro cactus is struggling as heat and drought intensify in Arizona. With record-setting summers in 2020, 2023 and 2024, scientists at the Desert Botanical Garden are noticing unusual patterns and symptoms as 20% of the sanctuary's cacti have dropped dead. They are scrambling to find ways to replace the dying cactus breed. PHOENIX - The heat and drought are taking a toll on Arizona's iconic Saguaro cactus. The symbol of the southwest may be in big trouble and scientists are scrambling to find answers. Why you should care Giant Saguaros, an icon of the southwest. This majestic cactus is found only in the Sonoran Desert. But over the last five years, people are noticing more and more of them are leaning, rotting and dying. So what's happening, and why are Arizona Saguaros so stressed? What they're saying "The top just broke off. Right after that happened, the whole skin just sort of slid right off," says Scott Buck. Buck bought his Gilbert home because of the beauty of the three giant Saguaros in the front yard. Within the last three years, two have died. "It was just a black, tarry, smelly mess and one is starting to decay. There was just the black goo that came shedding off its skin," he said. Kimberlie McCue, Chief Science Officer at the Desert Botanical Garden, is seeing a similar trend. "This is what's left of that, which was a very large Saguaro. It didn't just collapse, which is the normal thing that we used to see, it snapped," she said of a dead cactus in the sanctuary. What we know The morbid trend has hit the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden hard, where their family of about 1,000 Saguaros have recently been reduced to around 800. "In 2020, Saguaros started dying. It's definitely hotter than it used to be, consistently hotter in the summers than it use to be," she said. We had a hot, dry summer in 2020, 2023 was hotter and 2024 was worse. The hot temperatures put the cactus under stress, making their skin gummy and their insides more susceptible to disease. "A lot of Saguaros would drop an arm, also something we had never seen before," McCue said. Local perspective Corpses of giant cacti can be found across the state. Concerned by the current heat pattern we're in, scientists are thinking ahead, committed to replacing what the heat has killed off. "So what we have here on these racks under grow lights are many, many, many pots full of baby Saguaros that are being grown," she said. It will take years, but hundreds of these baby Saguaros will one day become giants. Big picture view Not all the cacti are dying. "But it's certainly a truth that even these beautifully-adapted desert plants have their limits."
