This month I reflect back two decades to when I first stepped into the world of environmental crime. A friend in forestry had suggested I check out a medicinal plants workshop in the Virginia mountains. There I encountered a hidden economy. People were planting and digging up roots worth hundreds—sometimes thousands—of dollars per pound. I went to find out.
It felt like a low-rent James Bond rendezvous. I sat in my car parked just off I-64 in West Virginia. I was told to watch for a green Ford pickup. It would have a county agent who promised to introduce me to a ginseng grower. Ginseng is secretive business. Time passed. A blue Ford pickup entered the lot and parked near me. Was this a test of my color sense? After a few minutes, the driver got out, came over and introduced himself as the grower. Finally a blue pickup pulled up: the county agent.
Later the grower confirmed the basis for paranoia. “The way it’s been,” he said, “if somebody finds out you got ginseng on your land, it disappears. It’s like having money buried on your property. You don’t want everybody under the sun to know.” Theft and poaching were common.
Researching and writing GINSENG, THE DIVINE ROOT opened my eyes to a world I never imagined. This month marks 20 years since its publication. I had a lot of support along the way, 
from Smithsonian magazine to the editors at Algonquin Books. Especially the people I interviewed who knew so well the plant, its properties, its black markets and communities. They shared their wisdom generously.
Ginseng diggers weren’t just foraging. The work was organized, secretive. In some cases it was criminal. It was historically a way of life for some. Its supply lines stretched around the world. I felt I had to write a book about this subculture. But I had no idea then how big that world would become.
Ginseng’s wild roots can take years, even decades, to mature. Its scarcity and high demand created something I kept hearing about in my conversations with diggers: a black market shaped by knowledge of the land, economic need, and chemical properties. They almost couldn’t resist.
It raised a question that stuck with me: Why couldn’t even those who knew the risks say no?
Getting Closer to Poachers
A decade after my book came out, I returned to Appalachian forests to follow up with convicted poachers and NPS forensic biologist Janet Rock for Smithsonian Magazine.
Through the years I kept encountering the same question in my reporting on nature. What drove people to risk their freedom for a wild plant or a sea creature?
Park rangers told me about poaching networks active deep inside park land. Undercover teams analyzed the motives of illegal crews in the Sea of Cortez and found long international supply lines. Poachers knew exactly when and where to harvest—and how to avoid detection. It wasn’t random. Increasingly, it was patterned, informed, and persistent.
In the years after the book came out, what I had witnessed first with ginseng was becoming a pattern. Criminals were turning to nature for profit, and communities and parks getting taken. Nonprofits and a few law enforcement agencies were making connections and fighting back, in forests and open waters.
An Unfolding Pattern
Still the issue was getting bigger. The National Park Service rangers I interviewed in the Great Smokies had their hands full with a rise in poaching and crime rings. The protectors of sea wildlife in Ava Salzman’s graphic history ran analyses that showed, beyond the boat crews, big buyers across the ocean. Transporters were openly hauling illegally mined material. We need to shift how we see the problem.
Across the stories I researched, I began to see something else too: When nature’s treasures become scarce and more valuable, the money draws criminals into the environment.
Plants. Minerals. Wildlife. The specifics change but the incentives, risks, and human stories are strikingly similar.
Organized Crime Expands the Problem
In 2024 my reporting led me to a shocking version of that phenomenon: sand crime rings. An ordinary and abundant material, sand. But global demand for it in construction + organized crime turns it into fuel for powerful, often violent networks for pulling it out of riverbeds and onto trucks to building sites.
Different resources. Similar crimes. And people who called for change faced reprisal.
Worldwide the scale of damage is almost unbelievable. Sand and other transnational environmental crimes reap hundreds of $ billions in profits each year. (See graphic.)
Clarifying Issues, People Seeking Solutions
Still, people in many places are standing up to corruption and the damage. These efforts are showing results. We share those experiences in these narratives.
There are more ways to get inspired. This month, friends at BookDNA (formerly Shepherd.com) asked me to share some of the books that inspired me. Here’s my list of Books on Nature That Read Like True Crime. I had fun putting it together. Please check it out and let me know what you think, and what you’re doing on this.
