The world may still have gold and myrrh, but it's quite possible that frankincense could become a thing of the past, given ecological pressures on the arid lands where it grows in Ethiopia.
The storied resin, known to millions as one of the three gifts of the Magi, the wise men who visited Jesus after his birth, is made from gum produced by the boswellia papyrifera tree. Its "bitter perfume" is used as incense in religious rituals in many cultures, as well as an ingredient in perfume and Chinese traditional medicine.
Dutch and Ethiopian researchers studying populations of the scraggly, scrub-like trees in northern Ethiopia found that as many as 7% of the trees are dying each year, and seedlings are not surviving into saplings.
Their paper in today's edition of the Journal of Applied Ecology finds that the Ethiopian trees that produce much of the world's frankincense are declining so dramatically that production could be halved over the next 15 years and the trees themselves could decline by 90% in the next 50 years
Frankincense has been harvested in the wild in theMiddle East and the Horn of Africa since ancient times.
The frankincense carried by the three wise men probably came from that area but those trees are mostly gone, says Frans Bongers, a professor of tropical forest ecology and management at the University of Wageningen in Holland.
"There's still some in Somalia, but no one knows how much. The main production area in the world right now is Ethiopia," says Bongers, who has studied the trees for the past six years.
Specialists have long said frankincense trees aren't doing well, but the paper is the first hard data on them, and the outlook is not good.
Frankincense is harvested by making cuts in the tree bark during the dry season. A cut is made every two or three weeks, and the resin that emerges to heal it is collected.
How much frankincense is produced worldwide isn't clearly known. Bongers says Europe imports about 400 tons each year, and about half of that goes on to China for use in traditional medicine while the rest goes to churches and perfume makers.
Most of that comes from Ethiopia. A long-term government push to relocate people from the highlands to the lowlands, where the trees grow, is putting tremendous pressure on the ecosystem.
Additionally, a shift in harvesting from large, government-controlled companies to private collectives has increased the pressure to collect larger amounts of resin. The old contracts were for up to 40 years, Bongers says, which gave incentive to preserve the resource. The new contracts can be as short as two years, "so they get what they can get," he says.
Heavy tapping appears to weaken the trees, making them more prone to attacks by longhorn beetles. Up to 85% of fully grown trees that die are heavily infested with beetles.
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