The effect on poaching in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Garrison says, has been "dramatic." And the new technologies could not have come at a better time. In the Great Smokies, monitored ginseng plant populations are healthy, but only if they are protected from all harvesting. That's hardly the case. Park officials estimate that $5.3 million worth of ginseng roots were pilfered from the park in the last nine years alone.

Already, wild populations of the closely related Asian ginseng have been extirpated across China, and wild-growing plants can now only be found in eastern Russia. In the United States, ginseng grows wild in a swath that reaches from New York to Alabama, and as far west as Missouri. It's an inconspicuous herb, growing some 6 to 16 inches tall, with compound leaves formed of five serrated leaflets. Fond of shade and moist, rich woods, ginseng produces small, bright red berries gleaned by deer and wild turkey.

But it's the ginseng root that spawns human lust and greed. Wrinkled as an old man's face, a mature wild ginseng root grows long and tapered, often with arm- and leg-like forks that give it the nickname "manroot." Ginseng has been used for centuries in Asia as an aphrodisiac and a general tonic, properties reflected in its genus name, Panax, which means "cure all," as in "panacea." Native Americans used ginseng to treat coughs and fevers. Early settlers figured it for a dose of good spirits. "It cheers the Heart even of a Man that has a bad wife," wrote Virginia's colonial governor, William Byrd. More recently, ginseng has been alleged to improve memory and lower cholesterol levels, no minor concerns for an aging American population.

Each year, more than 2 million pounds of cultivated ginseng root are exported from the United States, but wild ginseng is held in far higher esteem by buyers. Cultivated roots are considered far less potent than plants dug from the wild, and have a price tag of as little as $15 per pound. Even though the manufacturers of products containing ginseng and other herbs are moving away from wild sources and toward cultivated plants, "the temptation to plunder valuable wild medicinal plants from protected areas in the United States still exists," says Christopher S. Robbins of Traffic North America, a conservation group that monitors the trade in endangered plants and animals.