The magic stuff. (Photo: Michael S. Yamashita / National Geographic Society / Corbis)
My deep suspicion is that the rush for this “Himalayan Viagra” in Tibet is a rush for fool’s gold. But this is serious business. The study notes that, “In recent incidents, in June 2014 a clash with police in Dolpo left two dead in a dispute between members of the local community and a National Park Buffer Zone Management Committee over who has the right to collect and keep fees paid by outsiders for access to yartsa gunbu grounds.”
Come on, people, it’s a fungus, and the name yartsa gunbu translates as “summer grass, winter worm.” Does that really make you imagine the peril of the infamous four-hour erection?
But I am so glad the Tibetans have figured out a way to protect the resource in the middle of this madness, and maybe there’s something here to learn for other managers of imperiled resources.
Here’s the press release:
Overwhelmed by speculators trying to cash-in on a prized medicinal fungus known as Himalayan Viagra, two isolated Tibetan communities have managed to do at the local level what world leaders often fail to do on a global scale — implement a successful system for the sustainable harvest of a precious natural resource, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.
“There’s this mistaken notion that indigenous people are incapable of solving complicated problems on their own, but
strange behaviors 