Conscious Choice: Herb Extinction

June 1999 | Herbs for Health

Herb Extinction

by Meg McGowan

Our current system of currency, dollars and cents backed by gold, is simply a method of tracking an exchange of energy: a portion of time, knowledge, skill, or natural resources provided by one person and exchanged for the same. The gold itself has no value, nor does the printed currency. It is no different than trading beads used to mark the same types of exchanges in earlier cultures. What does hold true value are the elements necessary to sustain life — air, water, seeds, roots, sun, and soil — yet we do not esteem these resources in our culture.

The emerging focus on herbal medicine would appear to indicate a shift in collective consciousness, but it may be too little too late. An herbal tradition that sustains and supports individual human life must also sustain and support life on the planet. Currently many consumers using herbal supplements are doing so with a mindset that is born of our culture’s consumerist mentality. Many individuals browse the shelves of their local super store looking for a quick route to personal enhancement. Good press for herbs may be a death sentence as overharvesting pushes popular herbs to the verge of extinction.

Christopher Robbins, of TRAFFIC-North America (part of the World Wildlife Fund-U.S.) cites "habitat alteration and the introduction of non-native plants to sensitive ecosystems" as the "leading causes of declining plant species and populations worldwide," in his article "Medicinal Plant Conservation — A Priority at TRAFFIC," published in HerbalGram, No. 44. He goes on to say that "This is particularly true in the United States where 29 percent of the country’s 16,000 plants are at risk of extinction and where approximately 4,600 acres per day are lost to non-indigenous weed species (IUCN 1998: ENS 1998)....Timber, mining operations, and residential and commercial sprawl chip away at sections of this [North American eastern deciduous] forested region, which is home to a host of wild botanicals used to make herbal remedies sold in the United States and overseas."

Responsible wildcrafting does not deplete a native population, harvesting only a small portion of a plant population and leaving sufficient numbers to allow for regrowth. Unfortunately, we are now relying almost exclusively on the integrity of the wildcrafters to regulate this practice. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) lists five commercially traded native North American medicinal plants among those it is currently attempting to protect: American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius), goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis), yellow lady’s slipper (Cypripedium caceolus), pitcher plant (Sarracenia spp.) and Venus flytrap (Dionea muscipula). With the herbal medicine use continuing to rise, it is impossible for the native plant population to satisfy demands without putting more species at risk.

Specific endangered plants are not unimportant, but they are like drops of water in a large pond. For centuries we have struggled to accept the unpalatable reality that the earth is not the center of the universe. We may have acknowledged the fact, but the residual ripples have not yet calmed. As the earth is part of a larger cosmos, so are we as human beings part of the natural world, not the center, nor the cherry at the top. By claiming omnipotence, we have discarded and demeaned the knowledge that placed us in accord with the circle of life. We have distanced ourselves from the plant life that feeds us, as if we can create our own food and medicine in a more efficient manner.

The fallacy of our reasoning is becoming apparent. Our focus has been (and largely continues to be) product oriented. Debra Nuzzi St. Claire voices her concerns about hybridization in her article "The Gila Project: Malnutrition vs. Crop Diversity." She cites decreasing diversity, weakening resistance to unfavorable growing conditions in favor of shelf appeal, and loss of nutritional value. Life is not about product, but about process. Denying the process has created a world that cannot nourish our bodies or our souls. At the same time that we are "discovering" the healing properties of the food we eat, we are continuing to focus on product, hybridizing out nutritional benefits and adding problems through genetic engineering.

"Hybridization produces plants with a high percentage of unviable seed," writes St. Claire. "This means that every year gardeners need to re-order seeds instead of saving them from the mature plants. We are thus hampered in our efforts to be self-sufficient by our dependence on a few companies to reproduce the genetic codes that create our food. Along with the inbred inability to produce viable seeds, energetic vigor is lost. We who consume these plants are therefore deprived of this vigor also, which means that our children may never know what it means to feel vitally healthy."

Genetically engineered foods increase the negative impact of product-oriented biology exponentially. Growing genetically engineered foods puts all of plant life, and therefore all life on the planet at risk. Cross-pollination from genetically engineered plants is already occurring. More invasive weeds and hardier insects are a known threat, as chemical experimentation has proven over the last 50 years. Additionally, new seeds produced under the Technology Protection System or "terminator technology" are doctored with an array of genes which make the resulting plant infertile unless it is sprayed with a secret chemical "blocker." This means that only the manufacturer can produce viable seeds. The extent to which these new crops could transfer their infertile characteristics to other plants is unknown. The primary causes of declining plant species cited by Christopher Robbins, "habitat alteration and the introduction of non-native plants to sensitive ecosystems," are, in part, side-effects of genetically engineered plantings.

Those of us who grew up in a world where science and technology have usurped God are growing weary of worshipping our own intellect. We are disillusioned by promises that we can be spared the discomforts of life as foisted on us by the natural world. Technology has made our lives easier, but it has cost us our sense of purpose, our unique worth as human beings. Science gave us a new hero dressed in a white lab coat, bent over a microscope, intent on discovering wondrous cures for disease, but it has also given us nuclear weapons and nuclear waste. It has been responsible, along with technology, for creating the conditions for new diseases born of petro-chemicals and toxic by-products. After decades of cancer research it appears that we, like Dorothy, may never have needed to look further than our own backyard to find a cure for what ails us. A varied diet including truly nutritious food and an abundance of herbs may hold the greatest promise for cancer prevention. We are beginning to suspect that the two-headed child of progress has brought us more death than life, more questions than answers — not the least of which is who is ultimately profiting, the many or the few?

The greatest threat to our much ballyhooed American freedom is that we are in danger of losing the ability to harvest the benefits of plant life for ourselves and our families. We may be in danger of losing our right to buy or produce safe, nutritious food at all. Few safeguards are in place to protect the essential stuff of life, the things we take for granted. If we can put a price on what the natural world offers us, the result is exploitation and devastation. If we cannot price and sell what the natural world offers us, the prevailing assumption is that it is worthless. The reality is, it is priceless.

DISCLAIMER: Choosing a holistic approach to medicine means choosing personal responsibility for your health care. Herbs for Health offers a doorway through which to enter the realm of herbal healing, an invitation to further investigation on the part of the reader. It is in no way intended as a substitute for advice from a health care practitioner.

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