Frankincense trees in steep decline
December 21 (AFP) – Ecologists have warned production of frankincense, one of the three gifts the Wise Men gave to the baby Jesus in a key part of the Nativity story celebrated at Christmas, is in dramatic decline. A research team from the Netherlands and Ethiopia says a new study has shown numbers of the Boswellia tree, which produces the fragrant resin, are falling due to fire, grazing and insect attack. Frankincense, used in incense and perfume, could be “doomed” if current trends continue”, according to the research published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology. Production could be halved in the next 15 years if numbers of the tree – which grows in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula – continue to fall sharply, the ecologists warned. “Current management of Boswellia populations is clearly unsustainable,” Dr Frans Bongers of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, the leader of the team that carried out the research in north-west Ethiopia, said. He says their models showed that within 50 years, Boswellia populations will have radically declined, and that would mean “frankincense production is doomed”. “This is a rather alarming message for the incense industry and conservation organisations.” In their two-year study of more than 6,000 Boswellia trees, they found all populations are declining, not just those that are tapped to extract frankincense. This led the researchers to conclude resin extraction was not the root cause of decline, which they put down to an increase in fires, intensive grazing of cattle and attacks by the long-horn beetle. The large-scale study was the first to monitor the fate of the frankincense-producing tree, according to the scientists.
