Forward progress for the Cactus Conservation Institute!

•   In March 2012, the field work for our four-year study on the effects of harvesting on regrowth and mortality of peyote in habitat in South Texas was completed.  [A preliminary report following the two-year point was published in 2011. Our conclusions were published in 2012.]
   See the data collected after months 8, 12, 24, 36 & 48. (The 2009–2011 reports include color photos.)
   We plan to monitor the plants at two year interals. We intend to continue to do so for as long as we are able into the future.
Data for 2016

•   We designed studies on the cultivation of peyote in habitat and in the greenhouse.
    Progress on the greenhouse study began in 2009 and continues.
  

•  We provided technical assistance to the NAC concerning the greenhouse cultivation of sacrament that will be suitable for their needs. Interest in and responses to that material have been encouraging and overwhelmingly positive. 

•   We provided pro bono regulatory consulting services to a Native American Church group as they applied to the DEA for guidelines that would allow them to cultivate their sacrament in the greenhouse.

•   We acquired a reference sample of pellotine through the generosity of Vlastimil Habermann.
    For those who may be unfamiliar with the conservation significance of pellotine, the published analytical work on the non-williamsii species of Lophophora indicates that pellotine replaces mescaline as the major alkaloid, and that mescaline occurs only in trivial, pharmacologically insignificant concentrations in those species, or is not present at all. The implication is that the non-williamsii species in Mexico (also locally known as peyote) should not be harvested, as they are not effective sources of mescaline.
    In order to confirm the accuracy of those earlier analytical reports a known reference sample of pure pellotine was required as a GCMS and HPLC standard.

•   This has been a time of broadening communications and increasing visibility for the CCI. This website has attracted many inquiries, and we have been interviewed for articles in the popular press – including stories in Reuters (December of 2007) and the Time website – and for radio programs on NPR.  See our links page for more stories.

    This year already promises to be just as active.





Thank you for your support!