“It’s a long way from the delta to the North Georgia hills. A tote sack full of ginseng won’t pay my traveling bills.”

– Norman Blake, “Ginseng Sullivan”

Blake’s words may have been true when he wrote his famous bluegrass tune in the early 70s, but nowadays a pound of ginseng can pay a lot more than bills. The perennial plant is actually a highly valued black market commodity that is becoming scarce in its natural setting. As a result, public land officials are cracking down on illegal harvesting of wild ginseng.

One of the largest “stings” in Blue Ridge history occurred this past January, when 104 people were charged in the illegal trafficking of wild American ginseng roots that were poached from Virginia state lands, including Shenandoah National Park. The charges and gradually unfolding arrests were the result of Operation VIPER (Virginia Interagency Effort to Protect Environmental Resources), a joint operation set up between the state game department and the National Park Service-the crux of it taking place through the Dixie Emporium, a sporting goods store in Elkton.

Because ginseng is found in everything from grocery stores to herbal medicines to bottles of Arizona green tea, most people perceive it as a plentiful product. However, ginseng-especially plants that grow wild-is an increasingly rare and valuable commodity.

“On the black market, ginseng has a higher street value than cocaine,” says Claire Comer, public information officer of Shenandoah National Park. “The perception among certain cultures is that the wild mountain ginseng has a much higher efficacy.”

The ginseng that grows in the Virginia and North Carolina mountains from Shenandoah to the Smokies, sometimes called black ginseng, is considered the most valuable. In many Asian countries the plant is coveted for medicinal purposes that include lowering blood sugar and cholesterol, regulating metabolism rate, reducing stress, and increasing energy and sexual libido. Because wild ginseng is believed to have a higher potency, it can be sold from $260 to $365 a pound on the black market, as opposed to $8 to $10 a pound for cultivated ginseng.

According to Comer, the difference between wild and cultivated ginseng can be easily distinguished by the roots of the plant. Those of cultivated ginseng have a much smoother look, whereas the wild ginseng roots have rings around the tuber that are more pronounced and closer together.

“It’s not a trick of the trade by any means,” Comer says. “You can look right at it and tell immediately.” It is legal in some circumstances to harvest ginseng in the state of Virginia, but never on federally or state protected lands like Shenandoah National Park. In the case of Operation VIPER, ginseng plants within the park were marked to prove that poachers were harvesting in illegal areas. “Ginseng has DNA,” Comer says. “That is one of the reasons why we are able to definitively prove when ginseng comes from Shenandoah National Park. It will have a DNA that is not only specific to the park but to the very community it was taken from.”

Legally harvested ginseng has been exported from the United States since the early 1700s. Increased demand in recent years has begun to threaten ginseng, due to its slow regeneration process. Ginseng needs at least six years before it will bear new seeds to regenerate. Even then, less than10 percent of its seeds actually result in new germination, and it takes two years for a seed to germinate. Though it has not yet been placed on the federal endangered species list, it has been declared an endangered plant by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), which is an international agreement between governments that was created to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival. Currently 164 countries around the world participate in the agreement. A recent study in the Smoky Mountains revealed that less than 20 percent of the wild ginseng population remains today.

“We have every reason to believe that we’re at that point if not worse,” Comer says of Shenandoah National Park. “We’re in much more danger of losing a viable population.”

-Jedd Ferris