Daily News Record - Ginseng Plants Marked is what I thought was an interesting story. Does this sort of thing go on where you live?

Ginseng Plants Marked

Poachers Prefer Wild Roots

By WENDY PAGONIS
Daily News-Record

Ginseng plants growing in Shenandoah National Park are easy prey for poachers willing to risk arrest for a quick profit.

But park rangers are making the bounty less desirable with orange markings. Markings that seep into the plant�s valuable roots and identify it as the property of SNP. Even as time washes the bright orange splashes from view, Special Agent Bob Kreiling says sulfur in the marking continues to glow like a cigarette under investigators� lighting.

Kreiling works for the National Park Service investigating crimes that happen within Shenandoah�s 196,000 acres. And poachers are keeping him, along with the park�s other investigators, looking for ways to get ahead of the illegal trade.

But demand for the ginseng root is making it difficult. Poaching is a booming business.

According to the park service, American Ginseng is disappearing from many places in the wild. Increased demand for the plant�s root, and its medicinal benefits, encouraged entrepreneurs to overharvest ginseng in the United States. Now many clusters throughout the country are too young to reseed and are thinning. Shenandoah investigators blame this decline outside its boundaries for the increased ginseng poaching from the park.

Ginseng hunters can get permits to harvest the plant within national forests, but it is never legal to take ginseng from national parks. According to Kreiling, the wild roots are more valuable and easy to distinguish from cultivated ginseng grown on farms. Wild roots twist and curl in the ground. Cultivated roots grow straighter because they grow more quickly, Kreiling says, and they have fewer rings that mark the plant�s age.

According to the park service, ginseng grown in the wild will fetch $65 to $100 per pound for fresh roots or $260 to $365 for dried roots. Cultivated ginseng brings only $8 to $10 per pound.