Posted: January 25, 2008

Great Smoky Mountains National Park announced that on January 24, 2008, two North Carolina men were convicted and sentenced in Federal Court in Bryson City, N.C., of illegal possession of American ginseng in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Norman D. McCoy, 50, from Cherokee, and Nicholas B. Bryson, 27, of Topton, were both found guilty, fined and sentenced to a jail term, a landmark for federal officials and natural resource managers who are extremely concerned about the exploitation of ginseng and the future protection of this high valued root.

Each defendant pled guilty to the poaching charges. McCoy was sentenced to 20 days in jail and fined a total of $125 for possessing 18 wild ginseng roots and Bryson was sentenced to 15 days in jail and fined $135 for possessing 77 roots.

In two separate incidents in October 2007, Great Smoky Mountains National Park Rangers apprehended Bryson and McCoy in the North Carolina area of the Park. Each man was charged with Possession of Plants/Parts (Harvesting Ginseng). The offense carries a maximum misdemeanor penalty of up to 6 months in jail and/or fine of up to $5,000.

Illegal harvest of plants is a serious problem in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, particularly ginseng, a favorite target of poachers for its high profit margin in the black market. Its roots have been a traditional ingredient in Chinese medicine for thousands of years.

Coupled with ginseng’s growing popularity in the United States and other countries for its medicinal values, illegal harvest has increased over the years and has put pressure on the plant’s survival. In the international and domestic legal trade market, wild ginseng can bring between $500 to $800 per pound of dried roots. The larger and older the root, the more profitable.

Park Rangers are encouraged by the sentence handed down to these two individuals to include time in jail. “We hope that this will be a deterrent and discourage this illegal practice,” said Chief Ranger Bill Wright. “Ginseng is now becoming rare in the wild, even in the Smokies where ginseng collection has been prohibited for almost three quarters of a century. Many areas that used to sustain stands of wild ginseng have been harvested to the point that the more mature plants (five years of age and older) that would normally reseed the populations are no longer present, and the younger plants are not mature enough to reseed. As human demands increase on this species, extinction of wild populations throughout its entire range becomes a real possibility. The protection of these resources becomes even more critical.”

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