Commercial harvesting on the Tibetan Plateau continues to push many of China's most treasured medicinal plants and wildlife to the edge of extinction
Ransacking the Hills
According to the statistics from the China Academy of Science's Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology (NWIPB), dozens of natural medicinal herbs only found in Tibet and Qinghai face extinction due to exploitative harvesting practices. Chinese rhubarb, a medicinal plant once widely used in traditional Chinese and Tibetan medicine, is one of them. The herb is considered a basic component of more than 800 traditional Chinese medicine treatments.
But now, local manufacturers in Qinghai's Tibetan pharmacies must purchase artificially cultivated rhubarb from neighboring Gansu Province.
The NWIPB report revealed that the main growth area for rhubarb has moved up to 4,200 meters above sea level, above the reach of collectors.
Peng Min, a research fellow who has studied the chemical compounds of Chinese medicinal plants for nearly 20 years, said he believes nearly all of the most widely used herbs are headed for extinction given current harvesting practices. In addition, Peng said researchers now approach the field with the knowledge that any medical discoveries could result in a spasm of demand for the plant.
Peng said there's a cycle of depletion which is being perpetuated by Chinese medicine manufacturers. The popularity of traditional treatments spurs pharmaceutical manufacturers to push up the price of wild herbs. Once the plants are rapidly removed from the natural environment, supplies of the herbs are driven down.
Paris polyphylla is an herb that suffered extensive harvesting in the aftermath of the deadly 2003 SARS epidemic. Traders offered 500 yuan to buy a kilogram of the plant and it is has now been harvested to the point of extinction in Pingwu County of Sichuan Province, once a major collection area for the herb.
Dendrobe, believed to be as highly nutritious and healing as ginseng, was once abundant in southern China. This year, the Ministry of Environmental Protection announced that the plant no longer grows in China. Enterprises producing dendrobe-containing drugs rely solely on imports from Southeast Asia.
A Greater Catastrophe
The extinction of one species of plant is known to cause the deaths of other organisms. A 2011 survey conducted by the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences under the China Academy of Sciences provides vivid examples. The marked decline of Birthwort has put the survivability of 20 unique species of Swallowtail butterflies in danger. The unlimited excavation of Rhodiola Kirilowii, a plant often used in gynecology related ailments in Chinese medicine, is forcing the Parnassius Glacialis Butler butterflies that live on the plant to essentially become homeless.
Some have suggested that the farming of medicinal plants may be the only way to preserve the use of traditional Chinese medicine treatments.
However, Wei Lixin, a member of Ethnic Medicine Committee of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia Commission, said that cultivated herbs can be costly and are less attractive to drug companies.
The use of farming to ensure supply requires massive investments for a Good Agricultural Practices certification from the government, said Wei. The results of herb cultivation can be varied – and it can take three to five years for herbs to mature before quality can be determined.
At present, NWIPB is China's only agency that has successfully cultivated seven types of wild medicinal plants. It's also a policy that's been characterized by some as requiring too much heavy investment and highly trained researchers in comparison to conservation efforts.
While the traditional Chinese medicine industry needs to break away from its current business model, Peng remains skeptical of any breakthroughs from environmental regulators.
"The first-come, first-served approach to harvesting requires alternative solutions, but the government isn't going to be the one to deliver it."
There's nothing garden variety about the caterpillar fungus, but its slow elimination from the hillsides of the Tibetan Plateau is far from surprising.
A parasitic fungus that infects and mummifies its host, the mushroom tip that sprouts from the head of the caterpillar now fetches up to 100 yuan. Used for hundreds of years in traditional Chinese medicine treatments for a variety of ailments, the caterpillar fungus, along with many other forms of wildlife found on the Tibetan Plateau, is being drastically diminished by commercial harvesting.
Herbal remedy experts say natural habitat destruction and unsustainable collection practices throughout China are threatening the availability of a wider range of treatments. Among the 398 endangered plants included in the China Red Plant Data Book released by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, 168 are used in traditional Chinese medicine.
And, of the nearly 3,000 endangered species of plants in China, more than 60 percent are widely used in traditional Chinese medicine.
A surge in demand for traditional Chinese medicine with the rise of middle-class incomes in China has also coincided with a retreat in environmental monitoring.
In 2007, the Chinese Pharmacopoeia Commission announced that "no additional natural herb plants will be added to the National Medicine Encyclopedia." The commission added that "Chinese patent drugs made from natural plants or wild animals on the brink of extinction and the overall availability of Chinese herbs will no longer be recorded by the commission."
Mushrooming Market
The decline in supplies of traditional herbs is a decades-old phenomenon. Not so old is the noticeable difference in prices. Last year, caterpillar fungus fetched between 120,000 to 160,000 yuan per kilogram. A single mushroom stem with good appearance and quality could easily be sold for 70 to 80 yuan in Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces, the two biggest markets for the trade of Chinese medicinal supplies.
This year, statistics by the China Association of Traditional Chinese Medicine released in July indicate the price of Chinese caterpillar fungus jumped by roughly 30 percent.
Some critics say the sky-high prices signal a bubble in the market. In Tongrentang, the most famous retailer of traditional Chinese medicine, top-shelf caterpillar fungus is still being sold for 888 yuan per gram, more than twice the price of gold.
But others, including nomads and gatherers of the mushroom, say the prices merely reflect a countdown to the mushroom's extinction. Rongga, a 65-year-old Tibetan female resident in Yushu county of Qinghai Province, said she has to spend at least a month in the mountains to collect less than 500 grams of the fungus to gather the equivalent of one day's work 30 years ago.
Yushu was once known for producing the highest quality caterpillar fungus in the world, but the agricultural and forestry departments of the Tibet and Qinghai governments predict that next year's supply will suffer an unprecedented decline.
The area continues to receive increasing amounts of visitors seeking to capitalize on the gold rush of the caterpillar fungus. An official from the Yushu Poverty Alleviation Office who declined to be named said current resources for conservation enforcement are not sufficient to stem the growing onslaught of herb collectors from outside of the region.
Rongga said the growth of caterpillar fungus collection has been driven to unsustainable levels by gatherers that destroy the local ecology in the process of harvesting the mushroom. "They use shovels to dig holes, and leave behind ditches larger than 20 centimeters in depth. The holes aren't refilled and this changes the land," she said.
Local Tibetans are taught to refill the holes carefully during the caterpillar fungus collection to ensure future harvests.
By staff reporter Liu Hongqiao
Data:
27.10.2012
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