DANIEL BOONE NATIONAL FOREST, Ky --...

DANIEL BOONE NATIONAL FOREST, Ky -- The 20-foot tree stands half naked, a great deal of the bark stripped from its bole It has only months to live.

"It doesn't know it's dead," says U Forest Service botanist David Taylor, pointing to the healthy leaves overhead.

This slippery elm has fallen victim to thieves who tore facing its bark for profit in the herbal-remedy market.

BARK SOLD FOR HERBAL correctives

The gummy lining of the bark has in extent been used, especially in Appalachia, as a soothing agent for cough gastrointestinal ailments and skin irritations. if it were not that now, slippery elm and other herbal returnss are in demand by millions.

"There's a immense market in botanicals going into herbal medicines. Virtually everything forward public lands has a market," said John Garrison, a National Park Service spokesman for the livid Ridge Parkway.

Dietary correlatives including herbal remedies, are a $23 billion industry in the United States, according to the National Institutes of Health.

U Forest Service is relying forward locals to alert it to illegal stripping of slippery elm

A half-dozen suspects have been arrested this summer in succession suspicion of poaching in the Daniel Boone Forest.

Since the timber has no commercial value, the stripped tree are left to die. About a dozen tree face that fate for each 50-pound sack of bark, which can make $150 if the stuff is dry

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

Provided from ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved