herbs and endangered species

[Guest guest]

Eric,

When it comes to the use of animals and the potential use of endangered species

(plant or animal) the existence of bias is both unavoidable and beneficial. It's

unavoidable because everyone already has a perspective that the use of, say in

this case, animals, is either OK or not OK, and it is a bias to find it

acceptable as much as it is a bias to find it unacceptable.

 

Also, I think a certain amount of bias stemming from personal ethics is a good

thing. For example, my bias is that I do not use higher animals in my practice.

I will use insects and shells, I'm no vegetarian. But gui ban, no matter how

useful, is worth finding a substitute for. Farmed and perhaps mistreated, or

wild and free and rare, either way turtles are special to me. I'd go so far as

to consider them sacred in an amorphous sort of way (amphibious?).

Yes, it is better to have exact facts than mere supposition. But by removing

ourselves entirely from the market, we avoid the possibility that we might

participate in something reprehensible.  Who can stand behind an industry that

contributes in any way to bear gall bladder milking, tiger penises, and rhino

horns? The fact is, many animals might not be endangered YET.

 

Your example of wild ginseng is excellent. It was entirely for chinese export

that 95% of the wild american ginseng was overharvested from the eastern US in

the early 1900s. There is not a single state of its native range where it is not

endangered. Today less than 1% remains in the wild. Although this plant is a

valuable medicine to the Chinese, I believe it had great importance to the

native groups who took care of it in their woods for centuries without

overharvesting. By promoting only the medicinal value of a plant, we generate

increased trade in something that might not be a sustainable harvest.

And as long as there are people willing to pay higher and higher amounts for the

rarest of plants or animals, there will be someone who can't resist harvesting

it or killing it. Just in the last decade the popularity of Kava kava has

decimated the stands of this plant on its native islands.

 

So, I am willing to risk a certain amount of knee-jerk conservationism for the

sake of not participating in some of the practices in which chinese medicine

(and threads within chinese culture) has definitely been implicated in the past.

I always welcome information and facts regarding the cultivation of rare plants,

but my resistance to killing turtles is independent of specific information on

their numbers. Anything I read could be inacurate, untruthful or obsolete.

(consider how poor we are at understanding the wildly fluctuating numbers of

returning salmon each year in the pacific northwest). Also, reports could easily

be influenced by a bias towards sales. Or simply by the impulse to justify

actions already engaged.

In some cases, " bias " is the most rational stance.

 

(once again appologetic for post length)

Erico