Primarily due to persistent demand from China, American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) was the most harvested wild medicinal plant in North America for more than 200 years.1 In the 1970s, concerns about high export volumes and overharvesting prompted American ginseng to be included in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).2 Today, only 19 states allow the harvest and sale of wild American ginseng, with regulations on the scope of harvesting varying by jurisdiction. After an analysis of transaction records and a detailed population survey, Maryland officials announced in June 2013 a new ban on wild ginseng harvesting on public lands, making it the last state in the region to enact such a regulation. (Alabama, Minnesota, and Tennessee allow harvest on some, but not all, state lands.)
“There’s no other species out there that people can gather on public land and sell for money without anything accruing back to the people of Maryland who own the land,” said Jonathan A. McKnight, director of Maryland’s Natural Heritage Program (oral communication, August 22, 2013). “It’s an anomalous situation that there would be a commercial harvest from a public common of this nature.”
Traditional Medicine Use Fuels Ginseng Decline
According to West Virginia University biologist James B McGraw, PhD, who published a paper in early 2013 on the ecology and conservation of wild American ginseng, Jesuit priests in the early 18th century “confirmed the taxonomic relationship of P. quinquefolius to P. ginseng, a relative on the Asian continent that has been revered for its medicinal properties for millennia.”1
When American ginseng was discovered in North America, Dr. McGraw wrote, “The market was sufficiently profitable to stimulate intense wild harvest, eventually reaching an industrial scale.” In 1841, more than 290 metric tons of dry ginseng roots were shipped to Asia. “[E]ven a conservative estimate would suggest that this represents at least 64 million roots,” he explained.1
In his historical overview of ginseng, photographer, author, and American Botanical Council Board of Trustees Chair Steven Foster detailed some of the traditional uses of the plant’s Asian counterpart. “[T]he earliest mention of [Asian] ginseng [P. ginseng] is in the 2,000-year-old herbal of Shen Nong: It is used for repairing the five viscera, quieting the spirit, curbing the emotion, stopping agitation, removing noxious influence, brightening the eyes, enlightening the mind and increasing wisdom,” Foster wrote. “Ginseng's perceived use has changed little in 2,000 years.”3
Due to years of overharvesting in Asia, wild populations of Asian ginseng are scarce, and thus American ginseng is exported to Asia to meet the demand.4 It has been reported that Chinese consumers “prefer wild ginseng over cultivated because it more closely resembles the revered wild Asian ginseng,” and that “slower growing wild roots, which are harvested at an older age, absorb more curative power from the forest floor.”5
Additionally, McKnight mentioned American ginseng’s value and status in traditional Asian medicine as a major factor driving demand, and therefore harvest, in Maryland. “One of the things that gave me particular alarm is that this is a declining species that is selling for huge money [in] the Chinese traditional medicine trade,” he said. “I’m sure I don’t have to steer you to other examples of what that kind of value in that trade can do to things like tigers and rhinoceroses. Now this doesn’t have the glamour of a tiger or a rhinoceros, but it’s the same thing.”
International and State Regulations
According to Pat Ford, a botanist in the Division of Scientific Authority of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), American ginseng was included in Appendix II of CITES to protect the species’ survival in the wild. “Appendix II includes species that are not currently threatened with extinction, but may become so without trade controls,” she explained (email, August 23, 2013). “CITES directly regulates international trade (e.g., import, export, and re-export), while the harvest of ginseng is regulated by the states.”
Despite the fact that ginseng also is grown under controlled conditions, demand is highest for wild-grown roots. “Although American ginseng is commercially cultivated in the United States,” said Ford, “wild roots and roots [that] appear to be wild-grown command the highest price in the Asian market.”
In Maryland, an annual ginseng collection permit is required by anyone interested in harvesting the plant’s roots. Permit-holders must document the amount of harvested material, the county in which the species was harvested, and the names and addresses of dealers to whom the ginseng is sold. Additionally, hunters may take only mature three- or four-leaved plants of at least five years of age. (In 2005, FWS increased the minimum harvest age to 10 years but reverted to a five-year minimum in 2006.6)
Ginseng harvest from state parks and forests was already prohibited in Maryland. The new ban applies only to harvest on other public lands, limiting future ginseng digging to privately owned lands. In addition to following the previously mentioned regulations, interested diggers must seek permission from landowners before harvesting.7
A list of specific laws and regulations governing the harvest of ginseng in all 19 states, as well as information on good stewardship practices, is available through the American Herbal Product Association’s website.7
Ginseng Harvest in Maryland
Maryland’s three bordering states – Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania – currently prohibit harvest from public lands. With a pound of dried high-quality roots (which consists of an average of 263 plants)8 fetching up to $1,000, eager ginseng hunters crossing the border into Maryland added to the problem.
Although the Maryland Department of Agriculture’s Ginseng Management Program has kept harvest records since 1979, they existed only in paper form, making any meaningful analysis difficult. In 2012, a grant from the Maryland Arboretum and Botanic Garden allowed for the digitization of the three decades worth of records, as well as a comprehensive survey of ginseng populations in the state.7
Smithsonian botanist Christopher Puttock, PhD, led the team of researchers in conducting a survey of wild ginseng populations in 10 sites throughout Maryland. “Whereas back in the last century populations of ginseng plants were in the thousands, we were finding only individual plants,” he said in an interview with Smithsonian Science. “The sites we surveyed were clearly being closely monitored by ginseng diggers. Just as soon as a plant reaches 5 years old, someone harvests them.”9
Dr. Puttock also was involved in the analysis of sales records between ginseng hunters and brokers. “We found that, since the 1990s, Maryland’s wild ginseng harvest has decreased by 46 percent,” he said. “It was once harvested in 17 counties in Maryland and now is harvested in only [four]. Today, 98 percent of Maryland’s wild ginseng is produced in only two counties.”7
Christopher Frye, PhD, the state botanist of Maryland, took this data and incorporated it into a white paper documenting the decline of the species.6 Maryland’s Natural Heritage Program Director McKnight and his colleagues then reviewed the paper.
“We suddenly found ourselves with enough expertise to be in a conversation about it, and our thought was, ‘Whoa, we could be getting ready to lose this species or have it become even rarer,’” said McKnight. “My job is to listen to the scientific arguments and then try and translate them into policy recommendations for the department. So I reviewed the material and I made a recommendation to the secretary of natural resources … that we not go to a threatened listing for the species, but that we end the commercial harvest from [public] lands.”
The ban is effective beginning September 1, the start of the ginseng hunting season that lasts until November 30.
“There is no time limit on the ban currently,” said McKnight. “If we see a recovery in the population, then we would weigh ending the ban. However, I believe that the commercial harvest of a plant from limited public land resources is probably an anomalous and unsustainable practice.”
A Slow Recovery
Although American ginseng is not yet officially classified as threatened or endangered in Maryland, state officials hope that the new harvest ban will raise awareness of this increasingly rare species and slow its decline in the wild. However, it will take some time for populations to recover.
“Ginseng is a long-lived, slow-growing plant that prefers [a] stable habitat in mature hardwood forests of [the] eastern United States,” said Ford of FWS. “Plants need to be at least five years old to reproduce, and regeneration is by seed only. Therefore, the species does not regenerate quickly or easily.”
In addition to its slow life cycle, American ginseng faces other threats to survival.
“There’s no way that the pickers are the sole means for the decline of this population,” said McKnight. “We’ve got a lot of other problems too. Invasive species, habitat disruption, and white-tailed deer are all problems for ginseng. So even if we remove all of the harvest pressure, we still have other ecological forces working on this population.”
According to Dr. McGraw’s 2013 paper, additional threats to ginseng include climate change, weather extremes, suburban sprawl, timber harvest, and coal mining.1
McKnight hopes that the new regulation will help ensure the species’ survival in the state. “Our job here is to make sure that Maryland’s public forests contain all the plants that they’re supposed to contain,” he said. “We hold them in trust for the people of Maryland, and what this science made clear is that we were losing this and other species right out from underneath us. I think this was a decision we had to make.”
—Tyler Smith
References
1. McGraw JB, Lubbers AE, Van der Voort, et al. Ecology and conservation of ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) in a changing world. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 2013:1-30.
2. American ginsing (Panax quinquefolius). CITES website. Available at: www.cites.org/common/prog/criteria/flora/P_quinquefolius_CA-US.pdf. Accessed August 28, 2013.
3. Ginseng. Steven Foster Group, Inc. website. Available at: http://stevenfoster.com/education/monograph/ginseng.html. Accessed August 23, 2013.
4. Ginseng. World Wildlife Fund website. Available at: http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/ginseng/. Accessed August 29, 2013.
5. Hankins A. Producing and Marketing Wild Simulated Ginseng in Forest and Agroforestry Systems. Virginia Cooperative Extension. Available at: http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/354/354-312/354-312.html. Accessed August 29, 2013.
6. Cavaliere C. US FWS Reinstates 5-Year Age Limit for Exported Wild American Ginseng. HerbalEGram. 2006;3. Available at: http://cms.herbalgram.org/heg/volume3/page102.html. Accessed August 26, 2013.
7. Good stewardship harvesting of wild American ginseng. American Herbal Products Association website. Available at: www.ahpa.org/portals/0/pdfs/Maryland.pdf. Accessed August 23, 2013.
8. Frye CT. Plant element decision form: Panax quinquefolius. Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Wildlife and Heritage Service; 2012.
9. Wild ginseng in steep decline in Maryland, survey reveals: Q&A with Smithsonian botanist Christopher Puttock. Smithsonian Science website. Available at: http://smithsonianscience.org/2013/01/wild-ginseng-in-steep-decline-in-maryland-survey-reveals-qa-with-smithsonian-botanist-christopher-puttock/. Accessed August 20, 2013.
|
