High prices make wild ginseng endangered
The plant, which once flourished in maple forests in Ontario and Quebec, is now scarce
Copyright 2001
The Vancouver Sun
August 28, 2001
By Kate Jaimet
ARDEN, Ont. - A single, perfect wild ginseng root can sell for thousands of dollars.
No wonder the plant is in danger.
Botanists who know the few remaining spots where wild ginseng grows in Canada guard the secret as though their honour depended on it. If word got out, the ginseng would soon be gone. Dried roots, even imperfect ones, sell for $1,000 a kilogram. Yet the five-leaved plant with its bright red berries once flourished in sugar maple forests across Ontario and Quebec.
"This is one of the few species that used to be common, and that we were able to reduce to so few remnant populations," said Simon Nadeau, a biologist with Environment Canada's Canadian wildlife service.
"It's been happening since the 18th century. But plants," he added with a shrug to convey public lack of interest, "who cares?"
In the early 1700s, the King of France sent the Jesuit priest Father Lafitau to search for valuable herbs or spices in the New World. In 1716, Father Lafitau identified the ginseng, which appeared similar to Korean ginseng, used in China for thousands of years as a general tonic for health and longevity. It was said that the Chinese emperor would pay three times its weight in silver for the dried root of the plant.
"This discovery, in its time, generated as much excitement and greed as the later California gold rush," wrote Brother Marie-Victorin, founder of the Institut Botanique de Montreal, in his book Flore Laurentienne in 1964. "The settlers, finding more profit in searching for ginseng than in sowing wheat, abandoned their land and took to the woods."
The harvest continued for centuries, waxing and waning depending on how easily searchers could find the plant, and how much money it would bring. Only in the 1980s did botanists from the Montreal herbarium, concerned about the survival of the ginseng, attempt to determine how much of it remained in the wild by visiting sites identified in historical records.
What they found dismayed them: They could discover only 40 large patches of wild ginseng in all of Ontario and Quebec. Although other sites exist, the plants there number so few -- less than 170 individuals -- that botanists believe they will inevitably become inbred and die off in the long run.
Of the 40 viable sites, evidence suggest that about half are known to ginseng harvesters. Harvesters may also know of other sites which they, in turn, are keeping secret from government biologists.
"There are people who live in the country and they know it has value," said Nadeau. "There are people in the natural medicine business who will buy it in Toronto and elsewhere."
Although ginseng is grown commercially in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, this farmed root does not hold nearly the same value for ginseng connoisseurs as the wild root, selling for only about $30 a kilo. The wild root grows extremely slowly, taking 20 to 25 years to reach its mature size, compared with three to four years in commercial harvest. Because ginseng is meant to promote longevity, the old roots have a mystical value for traditional believers in the plant's healing properties.
The shape of the root can also lend it additional mystical traits. The ginseng root looks like a small parsnip; but instead of growing straight down, the root branches off when it hits stones or other obstacles. This can result in a root that resembles a human figure, with two legs, two arms and a torso. These perfect roots will be mounted and sold for thousands of dollars as charms for good luck and business prosperity.
"It's put into a frame with a velvet backing. It becomes a valuable gift for someone in Hong Kong or the Far East," said Don Cuddy, an ecologist who recently retired from the Ontario ministry of natural resources, where he co-chaired the ginseng recovery team. "The majority of ginseng that goes out (of the country) goes in businessmen's briefcases."
In 1988, the committee on the status of endangered wildlife in Canada listed ginseng as an endangered species. However, the plant has no legal protection since it is not listed on either the Ontario or the Quebec endangered species acts.
Endangered plants are a low priority, and since then, Cuddy said: "The province of Ontario has done nothing to protect it on Crown land."
Harvesting ginseng on Crown land is not actually illegal. Like picking blueberries, people have done it for centuries. Although the province could technically charge a ginseng harvester with theft, the case would be thrown out of court, Cuddy said, because of the long-established tradition of harvesting the root on public lands. To make the harvest illegal, Ontario would have to give due notice to harvesters that they would be charged with theft for digging up ginseng roots, a task the ministry is not eager to take on.
"To try and get the ministry of natural resources to do that is like pushing a tonne of molasses up a steep slope," Cuddy said.
If wild ginseng were listed under the federal Species at Risk Act, there would technically be an obligation to develop a plan to protect it on both public and private lands. But that, too, is fraught with pitfalls.
Listing a species normally requires publishing the exact location where that species lives: in the case of the ginseng, that would only serve to tip off harvesters. Government botanists are so wary that they sometimes do not even tell landowners if they discover ginseng growing on their land.
"You want landowners who will be co-operative. Not people who will go and harvest it and sell it," Nadeau said.
As for telling private landowners they cannot harvest the plant on their own land, everyone involved in recovery efforts admits that would be extremely touchy, especially as long as there is no enforcement against digging ginseng on public land.
"I wouldn't even go near telling a landowner they can't pick it on their own property when we're allowing it to be picked on Crown land," said Cuddy.
Botanists are also concerned about other dangers. Deer, overabundant in the Ontario woods, enjoy grazing on the plant. Stands of hardwood trees that shelter ginseng can be cut down for development. And a trend among some commercial ginseng growers to plant cultivated ginseng in the woods alongside wild ginseng could spread disease or lead to genetic mixing, the outcome of which is uncertain.
But scientists on the ginseng recovery team are prepared to exercise all their creativity to save the wild ginseng. Cuddy suggests that certain harvesters could obtain a licence to gather a sustainable amount of ginseng from designated areas in Crown lands. This would give a harvester a stake in conserving the ginseng, and enlist that person in efforts to prevent poaching by others.
Nadeau suggests sabotaging harvesters by injecting a blue dye in the wild ginseng that would be harmless to the plant, but would ruin its value on the market.