Forty years ago, Pennsylvania declared that it was in the public’s interest to preserve and enhance native wild resources, including non-game animals and wild plants. The Wild Resource Conservation Act
Are we yanking 200,000 ginseng plants from Pennsylvania forests every year?
Updated Dec 23, 2020;
Posted Dec 23, 2020
The root of the American ginseng is the part of the plant sought by sellers and buyers. (John Carl Jacobs photo)
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That would be equivalent to about 200,000 plants being harvested from Pennsylvania’s woodlands annually.
But, according to DCNR, about 30 percent of the harvest is plants that the sellers have planted as seeds or transplanted into the wild. No ginseng harvest is permitted on public lands in Pennsylvania.
Penn State botanists who have been tracking the state’s ginseng industry since 2012 will take a deeper look behind those numbers with a $45.000 grant from the state’s Wild Resource Conservation Program.