Two isolated Tibetan communities have managed to successfully devise a regulatory system for the sustainable harvest of Himalayan Viagra, which is used as an aphrodisiac.
Co-author Geoff Childs of the study from Washington University in St. Louis said that there's this mistaken notion that indigenous people are incapable of solving complicated problems on their own, but these communities show that people can be incredibly resourceful when it's necessary to preserve their livelihoods.
In one remote village, for weeks in advance of the community-regulated harvest season, all able-bodied residents are required to show their faces at a mandatory roll call held four-times daily to ensure that no one is sneaking off into the nearby pastures to illegally harvest the precious fungus.
While regulations such as these might seem overly authoritarian, they've been welcomed by community residents desperate to get a grip on chaos associated with feverish demand for yartsa gunbu, a naturally-occurring "caterpillar fungus" prized in China for reported medical benefits.
The study is published in the journal Himalaya.
