58 | New Scientist | 21/28 December 2019
and toothpaste to food and drink flavouring.
Boswellia habitats have been under
pressure for decades. Rising populations
have increased demand for firewood and
land for farming. Expanding cattle and goat
herds gobble up tree seedlings before they
have a chance to grow. These factors are
contributing to what forest ecologist Frans
Bongers at Wageningen University & Research
in the Netherlands refers to as the “cryptic
collapse” of the tree population in Somalia,
Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan,
the countries from which most of the
frankincense comes.
Bongers’s interest in the frankincense
forests began 20 years ago with an invitation
from one of his doctoral students, Woldeselassie
Ogbazghi, to visit these forests in Eritrea. InGOLD
Unlike frankincense, which has
become rather a niche interest since
biblical times, gold has never lost
its lustre. It has remained, well, the
gold standard for all that is valuable.
That is largely psychological value,
however: gold isn’t intrinsically
rare or threatened. In fact, when
the British Geological Survey put
together a league table of “at risk”
elements in 2015, gold took the
bottom spot.MYRRH
It seems the three wise men didn’t
coordinate well when choosing their
gifts. Like frankincense, myrrh is a
natural resin. Most is extracted from
Commiphora myrrha, another small
tree native to many Middle Eastern
countries and the Horn of Africa.
It, too, has been used through the
ages to make perfume and incense,
and its breath-freshening properties
have led it to pop up in the ingredients
list of some high-end toothpastes.
The amounts consumed are small,
however, and there seems to be no
major supply crisis.AND GOLD
AND MYRRH...Frankincense is under pressure
(see main story), but how are the
Magi’s other gifts faring today?research published earlier this year, Bongers,
Ogbazghi and their colleagues looked at
23 populations of Boswellia papyrifera, the
species that accounts for about two-thirds
of global frankincense production, across
Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan. They found that
more than half the populations had no young
trees. Tree-ring analysis suggested it had been
several decades since any seedlings had grown
to become saplings or mature trees.
“When you look at active forests where the
trees are being cut and used for frankincense,
there are no new trees,” says Bongers. “In
some of the sites, the youngest trees are more
than 50 years old.” With B. papyrifera trees
living for 70 years on average, that indicates
an impending catastrophe: models suggest
frankincense production will drop “drastically
and rapidly” to half its current level within
20 years, says Bongers.
Improved fencing and fire breaks,
coupled with a concerted programme to
plant new seedlings and saplings, could still
turn things around, he says. But that isn’t the
whole story of Boswellia’s decline. In the past
few years, tappers whose livelihoods depend
on frankincense have been abandoning age-
old practices to extract more resin than is good
for the tree and the surrounding ecosystem.Booming market
Frankincense resin has antibacterial and
antifungal properties, and as a sealant barrier,
it plays a vital part in the tree’s survival. Taking
too much resin during tapping leaves trees
vulnerable to pathogens and infestation by
insects, such as the longhorn beetle. It also
drains the trees of nutrients needed for
reproduction. This could lead to the trees
producing smaller, poorer quality seeds and
underdeveloped saplings that are easily picked
off by fires or grazing cattle, says Bongers.
Again, simple measures help. Reducing
the intensity of tapping and the number and
size of tapping spots on existing trees, as well
as implementing tapping-free rest years and
using less damaging techniques and devices,
can improve the trees’ viability and prolong
their lifespan.
Admittedly, that is easier said than
done, says Anjanette DeCarlo at St Michael’s
College, Vermont. She leads conservation
projects in the Horn of Africa, particularly
in Somaliland, a breakaway republic in the
northern part of Somalia. “In a place like
Somaliland, they don’t have the resources
to have an environmental policy in place,”
she says. “It’s hampered by the fact we’re“ Consumers need to
be made aware of
the true cost of
frankincense”
JOEL^ CARILLET/GETT
Y^ IMAGES