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 A pile of confiscated ginseng roots is testimony to the threat posed by illegal collecting of this medicinal plant in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Through use of a root-marking technique, park staff are able to identify the source of certain illegally collected plants, potentially resulting in criminal convictions.
Janet Rock
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 By Janet Rock Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina and Tennessee, is the largest protected area in the southern Appalachians and probably the largest protected reserve for American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) in the United States. This plant has been collected illegally in the Smokies for its medicinal value since the park was established in 1934. Harvesting of wild populations of American ginseng is likely increasing throughout the plant’s range of eastern North America. According to buyers, the roots of ginseng found in naturally occurring populations are more valuable than cultivated roots, making the Smokies an ideal place to collect. The USDA Forest Service reports that collecting of wild ginseng roots may be escalating; in only three years the number of legal collecting permits issued for the harvest of wild roots on Forest Service lands has increased by about 300%. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is flanked by three national forests where ginseng collecting is permitted. As populations of the plant are depleted outside the national park, poaching pressure in the Smokies intensifies. In the last 10 years, park law enforcement rangers have seized nearly 11,000 illegally harvested ginseng roots in the national park. Park staff believe that only a small percentage of the roots actually poached from the park are detected, despite routine ranger patrols. In an effort to track the health of ginseng populations throughout the park, staff of the Resource Management and Science Division have weighed and dated more than 9,000 of the confiscated roots. Undamaged roots are then replanted for monitoring. Confiscated roots as young as one to three years have been processed. Sadly, plants younger than five years of age are usually not mature and have not had the opportunity to contribute seeds to the population (the only method of reproduction for this species). Ginseng was listed in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora in 1977. For 1999–2001, the Office of Scientific Authority issued findings on the export of ginseng based, in part, on data from Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The authority stated that collection of ginseng roots five years and older was not detrimental to the species, emphasizing that exported roots must be of reproductive age and produce seeds. An integral part of the park’s protection efforts has been the marking of wild and replanted ginseng roots to deter poaching in the park. For several years, resource managers have worked with law enforcement rangers and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture to mark roots. In 2000 the partners uniquely marked 3,500 roots in situ in the park. When law enforcement rangers recently seized roots at the park boundary, they were able to determine that the roots came from the park, as 4 of about 500 of the poached roots were distinctly marked. In 2001 the two defendants pled guilty and each paid a $200 fine. Additionally, they were banned from the park for one year and paid $5-per-root restitution to cover the cost of aging, weighing, and replanting the roots. The park monitors wild and replanted ginseng populations, which provides solid data on the effectiveness of law enforcement measures. The root-marking methodology developed in the Smokies is now being used to protect ginseng in Shenandoah and Mammoth Cave National Parks and Blue Ridge Parkway. Overall, this technique is helping protect American ginseng. |
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This material is from Natural Resource Year in Review--2001, published by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, in May 2001 (publication D-2255) /YearInReview/yir/yir2001/05_risks/05_2_rock.html Last Updated: |
