Stinkwood

Wandering through the Eden Project's humid tropics biome early in May, your editor happened to spot the Red Stinkwood tree bearing a label saying that it was both endangered and useful for treating prostate disorders.  With such a memorable name and thinking it might be of interest to any prostate sufferers there may be amongst Update readers, it was time to do a bit of research.

It turns out a product called Pygeum is derived from the tree.  This is sold in health food stores as a treatment for benign enlargement of the prostate, acting, we understand, by improving urinary flow rates.  The substantial demand for Pygeum in the developed world, estimated at $200 million per year, is threatening the world numbers of these interesting trees.

The tree itself is a slow growing hardwood inhabiting high humid rain forests in Africa.  Pygeum is derived from the bark of trees 10 or more years old.  When first discovered to be useful medicinally, small pieces of bark were removed and the standing trees could easily regenerate the removed portion.  But as larger quantities of bark are sought, sustainable practices are being overlooked or ignored.  Poaching is quite widespread.  In Mount Kilim in Cameroon, for example, researchers have observed that 80 percent of mature trees die as a result of poor harvesting techniques.

The International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (funded to a very small extent by the UK Government) is beginning to help farmers in Kenya, Cameroon and Madagascar to grow the tree and earn a living through sustainable harvesting of its bark.

However, it is going to be quite a struggle to prevent the pessimist's forecasts that the tree will be extinct within ten years coming true.