Craft and Tenure

We’ve taken a brief glance at the word “wild” and some of it’s possible meanings in regard to plants. Now let’s continue to break down the word wildcraft and  look at it’s implications:

A definition of “craft” from the Oxford English Dictionary is: “Intellectual power; skill; art”.  Nova Kim and Les Hook of Wild Gourmet Food, two very seasoned wildcrafters in  Randolph, Vermont say that the art or craft of wildcrafting, “is ‘the quality, production, expression, or realm of what is beautiful…skilled workmanship or execution.’ …When you know you are ‘a wildcrafter’ is when you walk through a landscape, familiar with the timing and seasons of those other beings around you, knowing that when you leave things will be better for having been there and better for you as well”. 

I have discovered that wildcrafters do not regard wild plants as being simply available for the taking. Tending the plant communities to increase species diversity and to help plants proliferate is very common. Tenure of wild species includes selectively harvesting certain parts of a plant so that it actually grows back more prolifically and replanting sensitive plants. Seed or spore dispersal is also common. These tending activities also blur the line between that which is “wild” or “cultivated”.

Nancy Turner, an ethnobotanist who teaches at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, says that “land tenure has always been an important element of land and resource use by First Nations”. Northeast Native Americans were known to intentionally clear lands by controlled burning in order to diversify plants and create land for the early successional plants that thrive in ‘disturbed’ habitats.

The ‘craft’ aspect of wildcrafting involves a stewardship of lands and plants through observation, knowledge, and intentional action, then using those plant resources to fashion fine art, delectable food, healing medicine, and useful tools. Wildcrafting is as much a cultivation of skill and civilized activity as it is a wild, primitive instinct.

The Medicinal Plant Industry

The terms wildcrafting and wild-harvesting have come into liberal use with the blossoming medicinal plant industry.  “His skill goes back to the hunters and gatherers at the dawn of humanity, but it has been resurrected under a trendy new name: wildcrafting” (Goldberg, “From Necessity New Forest Industry Rises”). “Wildcrafting” picked up more substantial meaning in the last twenty-five years as herbal medicine has become widely popularized in the United States. In this sense, wildcrafting refers specifically to the harvesting of uncultivated, or wild, plants to be marketed as products. It has become a word for a new niche market and wild plants have become resources to be commodified and commercialized. 

Just in the last several years the Non-Timber Forest Product market has boomed 20 percent annually (Goldberg). With high demand for certain medicinal plants native to North America, such as ginseng, goldenseal, and blue cohosh, wildcrafting often became almost synonymous with the poaching of medicinal plants for their high commercial value. With a market economy as the foundation of our livelihoods, there is a tendency for commercial value to dominate over ethical and traditional values. 

While poaching is one face of wildcrafting presented to the public, it tends to discredit a long-standing tradition of plant foraging that creates positive human relationships with and sustainable subsistence from the natural world. It’s important to understand the difference between poaching and wildcrafting of wild plants. Poaching  implies disrespect for natural resources, boundaries and life forms. However, wildcrafting, when practiced conscientiously, maintains value as a craft that supports people’s livelihoods, as a valid economic pursuit with potential to strengthen and sustain local economies, as a promoter of culture, food and craft appreciation, and as a reminder of our human place in and responsibility to ecological systems.