This coverage is made possible through a partnership between BPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
The ban on ginseng harvesting in the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests will extend for another year and possibly up to a decade, the U.S. Forest Service announced last week.
Ginseng grows slowly and can live up to 80 years. A valued medicinal plant across the world, the small mountain shrub with gnarled root is in danger of dying out.
Ginseng varieties exist across both east Asia and the contiguous eastern deciduous forest regions of the U.S. from Maine to Georgia. For centuries, the root has been used in everything from soup to herbal menopause supplements and diabetes treatments to liquor.
Ginseng digging has a storied history in Appalachia, and many old-time diggers had patches they returned to and cultivated. Treated right, it can be harvested over and over again.
In the past, ginseng harvesters would carefully save seeds and plant them an inch deep in the soil, where new plants would actually grow better than from seeds that had simply fallen to the ground, according to North Carolina Forest Service botanist Gary Kauffman.
“So people can actually enhance a population,” Kauffman said, “but not by digging it, because when you dig it, you're actually killing the individuals.” Sustainable ginseng harvesters know to only seek out plants between five and10 years old, and to look for plants with clear signs of maturity: red berries, stem scars, and three to five leaflets.
Nearly extirpated in China and Korea, the rare plant is in higher demand than ever. American ginseng can now fetch more than a thousand dollars per pound on the international market.
Over time, the increasing value of ginseng has incentivized diggers to harvest plants too early and often, endangering the plant in its native habitat.
Kauffman said conservation efforts may last multiple years, and no end to the ban is in sight. Though the ban may be frustrating for herbalists in the region, the measure is necessary to preserve this historically important plant, he said.
“It’s very important to look at that and try to preserve some of that culture,” Kauffman said. “To think of how can we preserve it in the future, so our kids and grandkids can also go out and see ginseng, and maybe in the future, harvest some ginseng.”
Kauffman said the Forest Service is monitoring more than one hundred ginseng plots across both national forests. Officials are also working with a seed nursery at the North Carolina Extension to increase the number of seedbeds in the biodiverse, nutrient-rich soils in the dark coves and hollers in which ginseng thrives.
Healthy ginseng communities consist of about 50 to 100 plants, Kauffman said. At present, many communities consist of closer to 25 plants — a good basis for growth, but not enough to allow harvesting. They also don’t begin reproducing in earnest until they are mature.
When the plants begin to increase in number and grow to maturity, the Forest Service will consider lifting the ban.
