As deer populations increase, the amount of vegetation they consume also increases. Included in their diet is the endangered wild ginseng. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Researchers say deer populations are threatening wild ginseng. They say the therapeutic herb could disappear from the American landscape within the next century. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shamane Mills has more:
Transcript
Researchers say deer populations are threatening wild ginseng.
They say the therapeutic herb could disappear from the American landscape
within the next century. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shamane
Mills has more:
Ginseng is a wild herb believed to boost energy and improve
concentration. The plant inhabits eastern deciduous forests from Maine to
Georgia.
James McGraw is a biologist at West Virginia University. He studied the
health of wild ginseng plants over the course of four years, and published his
findings in the journal Science. He found that increasing deer
populations threaten to eventually wipe out the plant.
“What we found was that populations were depressed because affects
of browsing. They weren’t reproducing; plants would begin to die and they
weren’t recruiting new plants into the population.”
McGraw says maintaining the wild herb is not only important for
ecological reasons. It’s also important to people who depend on it for
income; wild ginseng roots sell for hundreds of dollars a pound.
To control the deer population, McGraw suggests a change in hunting regulations or introducing more deer predators.
For the GLRC, I’m Shamane Mills.