[MPWG] In Selling Nature's Treasure, Dozens Buy Trouble

[Wayne Owen]

>From the Washington Post
January 2004


 In Selling Nature's Treasures, Dozens Buy Trouble
 By Peter Whoriskey

  Out in the rural towns around Shenandoah National Park, word got around
about Elkton's small country sporting goods store.

 The proprietor trafficked in the area's illicit natural prizes.

  Two hundred dollars for a black bear's gallbladder. Three hundred fifty
for a pound of wild ginseng root, even if it was harvested illegally.

 Dozens of people from several states stopped by, or called, to buy or
sell. Their trophies, it was understood, would be headed into the vast
international black market for the substances, which are believed to have
medicinal benefits.

 It was all a trick.

 Yesterday, officials with the National Park Service and the Virginia
Department of Game and Inland Fisheries announced the sting operation based
at the Elkton store. It was all part of a multiyear, multi-state
investigation into the illegal harvest or sale of American ginseng and
black bear organs, much of it for exportation to Asia.

  More than 100 people from several states could face charges resulting
from the investigation, which tracked the illicit plants with a recently
developed arsenal of special dyes and silicon chips. More than 40 people
have been charged in sealed indictments. Two were in custody.

 The investigation tied wild ginseng taken from Shenandoah National Park to
markets as far afield as New York, San Francisco, Hong Kong and South
Korea. Much of it was harvested by residents who have dug "sang" for
generations in a pastime as old as Daniel Boone.

  "The demand is huge, and the demand is growing," said Clay Jordan, acting
chief ranger at the park. "This is from one small [undercover] dealer in
one small mountain town. Multiply this by everywhere that ginseng grows,
and you begin to get an idea of the scope of what we're dealing with."

 Wild ginseng is considered more potent than the cultivated ginseng that
typically winds up in health food stores and is promoted as an energy
booster with other benefits.

 Its harvest and export from the United States to Asia dates back more than
200 years. In the hills of North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia
and West Virginia, residents have long made use of or exported the plant --
Daniel Boone reportedly among them. As far back as the 1820s, roughly 4
million pounds was exported in a decade, according to Department of
Commerce statistics.

 "It cheers the heart even of a man that has a bad wife," wrote the
18th-century Virginia author William Byrd, who used to chew it. "It
promotes insensible perspiration, dissolves all phlegmatic and viscous
humors that are apt to obstruct the narrow channels of the nerves. It helps
the memory, and would quicken even Helvetian dulness."

 But with wild ginseng roots fetching as much as $350 a pound in recent
years, the result of a voracious international market, the backwoods
tradition has depleted the stock of the wild plants in many states.

 Some national parks have proved particularly vulnerable because, while the
harvest of wild ginseng in some states is legal on many properties with the
required permits, the shortage of the plants has pushed many diggers into
national parks such as the Shenandoah and the Great Smoky Mountains. A
recent study at Shenandoah suggested that the population of ginseng may
have dropped as much as 75 percent over the last 30 years; another study
showed that roughly two-thirds of the ginseng in the park is young, the
mature plants having been taken.

 To combat the sang diggers, known to travel around the parks with
screwdrivers or long sharp sticks to cut out the roots, investigators have
taken to dyeing the roots bright orange and marking them with silicon chips
to identify them for potential future prosecutions.

 People continue to "go sangin' " because their families have done it for
decades as a pastime, and partly for the income, ginseng dealers said.

 "Finding a four-prong [mature] plant is like killing an eight-point buck,"
said Max Smith, a Virginia dealer who said he has a spoonful of the
ground-up root every morning as an "energy enhancer." "It's a trophy."

 Jim Chamberlain, a research scientist with the Forest Service who has
studied the harvest and exportation of the plant over time, said those who
hunt it "are often people from very poor areas where there's high
unemployment and low incomes. There's a great incentive to go out and
collect it. That's Christmas presents for their kids or a new washing
machine."

 While the ginseng enforcement is aimed at a species in severe decline, the
black bear population is considered healthy enough that hunts are organized
to control it.

 Officials said they are pursuing the black market in bear parts in order
to rein in the demand.

 The exploitation of ginseng and bears has driven both species to near
extinction in Asia, officials noted.

 Though the bears' gallbladders sell for $200 apiece locally, they sell for
more than $3,000 overseas, officials said, because they are in demand as a
part of traditional Chinese medicine. Uses include treatments for cancer,
burns, pain, asthma, diabetes and liver disorders.

 Bear paws, which are often made into soup, can fetch as much as $1,000
overseas.

 "The exploitation of Virginia's natural resources will not be tolerated,"
said Marsha Garst of the commonwealth's attorney's office of Rockingham
County and Harrisonburg. "Do you want your children to have to go to a zoo
to see a black bear?"