Poachers cash in on sage craze, imperiling the plant's survival for Native cultural needs

PALA, Calif. — More than 100 Native people and environmentalists gathered beneath a big tent in a meadow on an unusually chilly day in May to discuss climate issues and Indigenous responses.

Noshing on acorn porridge, chia, pit-roasted venison and pork and other locally-sourced foods, they discussed how their communities are coping as the region grows ever hotter and drier, and talked about possible solutions and mitigation. Vendors offered hand-crafted items for sale to help defer travel expenses or to share their cultural arts. Kids and adults played peon or hand games traditional to the region. 

Along with Native people from California and Arizona, the Kumiai and Cucupá, the Mesoamerican relatives of the Kumeyaay and Cocopah peoples of Southern California and southwestern Arizona, share many traditions and frequently meet to discuss common topics.

Norma Meza Calles, a Kumiai from Tecate, Baja California, had journeyed with other Kumiai and Cucupá people for the conference. But Meza Calles came to talk not only about decreased water supplies, hotter weather and cattle trampling delicate plants, but a potentially devastating threat to cultural practices and ecologies of ejidos, or traditional Indigenous settlements, in Baja California: the wholesale poaching of California white sage.  

The white sage has a long history with Southern California and Baja California tribal peoples. The silvery-green bush, with its distinctive white flowers in the spring, releases a rich, aromatic aroma when the leaves are burned to produce smoke. Some tribes use it in prayer. The leaves can be used to brew a soothing tea for sinus problems. The smoke from the practice of "smudging," wafting the smoke from a smoldering bundle of sage leaves, is used to clear the air.

California white sage has gained worldwide popularity, thanks to counterculture, New Age practitioners and even Hollywood stars. But that popularity comes at a high price: It's being poached by the ton from tribal lands, public lands and even some plots of privately-owned land, decimating ecologies and Native cultures in Southern California and Baja California.

Indigenous peoples and environmentalists hope that a new documentary will help raise awareness of the scale of the thefts and what people can do to reduce poaching, while state and local law enforcement officials and land managers wage a frustrating battle against poaching rings.

Native peoples who rely on the plant for ceremonies, medicine and other needs say that nothing less than their cultural practices are at risk if the white sage becomes extinct or so rare that harvesting any part of the plants would be impossible. Environmentalists and biologists fear that losing white sage also would imperil native pollinators who depend on flowering plants.

North Etiwanda Preserve, 'ground zero' for sage poaching

Cucamonga Peak towers over the North Etiwanda Preserve east of Los Angeles. Ron Goodman is a ranger on the 1,200-acre preserve, managed by San Bernardino County. He grew up here and still lives a short drive away at the the base of the rugged peaks, foothills and spring-fed waterfalls of the San Gabriel Mountains. Goodman spends much of his time hiking the preserve and the mountains, including the 8,862-foot-high Cucamonga Peak. 

"You know, the Latin name for California white sage is Salvia apiana, or bee sage," he said. It’s a major food source for native pollinators like local bees. When poachers take the seeds off the sage plants, they are also responsible for reducing populations of native bee species in the Golden State.

Goodman pointed out some stands of sage along a trail. They once were much taller and more robust, he said.

"Between the drought and the poachers, if it goes on much longer, a lot of the sage will cease to exist," he said. 

Trail users often notice poachers out at 5 a.m. about three to four days a week, he said. He attributes the increase in poaching since he first noticed it in 2010 to the wellness movement.

"All you need is one influencer to say it's a great thing to do and the demand just skyrockets," he said. 

Poachers have become more sophisticated. They once used 55-gallon trash cans, but now carry duffel bags, Goodman said. "Not only do they destroy plants next to the white sage but they also displace a lot of the wild creatures we have up here. You destroy the balance of nature," he said. 

Patrick Foy, a captain with the law enforcement division of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said state wildlife officers were involved in one sage poaching bust in December 2021. The state is coordinating with San Bernardino County prosecutors on the case, where three individuals were charged with illegally pulling plants from public lands. 

Chase Ash, a detective with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office, said trying to stem the flow of poached sage is like playing a game of whack-a-mole. Because current California law labels the thefts as illegal harvesting, which is a misdemeanor, offenders often get off with smaller penalties.

"It's generally a sigh of relief that you're in and out and then you may face a fine, or you may face nothing," he said. "So the amount of money they're getting for the sage is going to supersede the risk, and so it's not really a deterrent at this point."

As the retail prices and the sheer amount of stolen sage rises, the county has launched a special operation to deal with poachers.

"We've been able to charge people with grand theft," Ash said. But because the only identifiable victim is the preserve or the state of California, those charges often get reduced down. 

And, he said, the people who are making the money off poaching are not the actual poachers. "The people that are cutting it are generally low-income migrant workers that get $30 for a duffel bag," he said. "Those duffel bags, they hurt my back to carry."

It's not just public lands that are affected by the wholesale ransacking of the sage. Rose Ramirez, a native plant expert and co-producer of the new documentary "Saging the World," said she learned of at least one person whose fences were cut and knocked down on private land near Banning and the Morongo Reservation, allowing poachers to denude her property of hundreds of pounds of white sage. "She refuses to be identified," Ramirez said.

Indigenous peoples lose vital cultural assets 

In Baja California, Kumiai and other Indigenous peoples in the region use white sage for ceremonies and other cultural purposes. They have seen much of their sage wiped out by poachers.

"When the Kumiai pick, they just pick some pieces on the side," Meza Calles said, "and they’ll give it water when they traditionally pick."

But poachers don't respect the plants or the cultural practices they support, she said. “They cut it all the way down to the ground,” Meza Calles, an acclaimed cultural practitioner and basketweaver, said with Ramirez acting as interpreter.  "They leave nothing behind to regenerate, not even a stump."

Garden experts say that white sage loses leaves during droughts, a condition called "drought deciduous." The region has endured a long-term drought and hotter, drier conditions, which has further slowed the growth of the wild sage. Combined with the wholesale poaching, Meza Calles fears losing all the sage, which would deal a crushing blow to the cultures of the Kumiai and other tribes. 

Sage has become a big business, Ramirez said. Despite laws in both the U.S. and Mexico that require a permit to harvest a small amount of native plants, "Norma thinks that maybe some of the big businesses have been able to get by the law by paying the Mexican government for one permit," she said. "Then they bring in a bunch of people and they just take it all."

Ramirez said that using sage without learning about it and the cultural beliefs associated with sage and other plants is disrespectful to Native cultures in general.

"I wouldn't go to a church or a Jewish synagogue and just start chanting, because I would not have any clue about this culture and religion." Non-Native people don't seem to view Native cultures, spirituality and religion the way Native peoples do, she said. 

Author and photographer Deborah Small, who served as co-producer on the documentary and collaborated with Ramirez on the book "The Ethnobotany Project,"  said sage is worth so much to poachers because they make it into profitable products, "lotions and potions and sticks and selling them on Etsy and Walmart and everywhere."  

"The people who are turning them into a product to sell, they don't ask questions," Ramirez said. "They don't ask, 'Where is this from?' If the person selling it to them says it's sustainable, that's all they want to hear." 

If the seller can't exactly confirm where the sage they are peddling came from, it's potentially poached.

"And we know that by the looks of things, probably 90% of what is on the market, on the Internet or in stores is poached," she said. 

That's how stolen sage ends up on store shelves, on websites or on vendor's tables at powwows and farmers' markets. 

'Saging the World' showcases sage theft and its effects

Ramirez, a Chumash and Yaqui descendent, and Small collaborated with the California Native Plant Society to produce "Saging the World," a 30-minute film about the plant's importance to Indigenous peoples and the worldwide rage for sage that drives rings of poachers and the dealers who sell sticks of sage leaves at exorbitant prices.

Ramirez and Small hope the film will drive viewers to demand transparency from retailers about where the sage is sourced. 

The film features Native elders and cultural practitioners, including the late Tongva elder Barbara Drake, who explain the connections between Native peoples and their lands, including the relationships with plants like sage. It also shows why the craze for sage and smudging harms the plants and the lands the Native peoples inhabit, and provides solutions like growing sage at home or only purchasing sage from verified sources. 

"There's not enough sage for all the people," Ramirez said. "So, Barbara used to say we would give it to you."

But when Drake learned the severity of the problem and how much it was going around the world, she realized that was no longer feasible. "Barbara said people could go buy a plant," Ramirez said, while also advising that the customer first learned about sage's uses and importance.  

Many citizens of Southern California and Baja California tribes now have a new message: "We want people to stop purchasing white sage." In the best scenario, Ramirez said, Native people want people to grow their own sage.

"Grow it yourself, because when you grow it yourself, you are contributing to the environment and to the habitat," Ramirez said. "And you also know exactly where the plant came from."

People who can't grow sage at home should verify where sage for sale comes from, Ramirez said, either from a sustainable grower or from a private party who grows it and offers it.

There are some ethical options for people who can't grow their own but still want to have and use white sage. Two farms in San Diego County grow and sell sage as do some small farms in Oregon. 

SageWinds Farm nurtures sage and dreams

Ellen Woodward-Taylor has silvery-gray hair, about shoulder length, tied in a ponytail. She’s wearing a tie-dyed shirt, button-up jeans with frayed legs and well-worn hiking boots.

Three dogs hug her heels like ducklings as she feeds the two miniature horses that share a 40-acre spread in east San Diego County with her and husband, Ken. The dogs, nearly as large as the mini horses, and assorted wildlife ("Keep an eye out for rattlesnakes," she said) also inhabit the land.

Yet this tiny, wiry 80-year-old can wrangle a jackhammer, scamper up steep mountain trails in the rocky mountains that ring the Taylor homestead or carefully tend her beloved white sage plants with equal aplomb.

Ellen and Ken own SageWinds Farm, the only white sage farm in the U.S. certified as organic by both the USDA and state regulators. The Taylors grow hundreds of plants and also source some sage from a legitimate source in Baja California to keep up with the demand.

They began trying to cultivate the sage, known to be difficult to grow from seed in domestic settings, in 2010. It took the couple three years to master the art. In addition to two fields of sage, Woodward-Taylor has several dozen seedlings ready to transplant into the field. She waters each plant by hand, filling depressions in the soil that slowly percolate the life-giving water down to the sages' roots. Two wells keep the water flowing and the sage, as well as big shade trees, lots of flowering plants and even some grass, growing. 

After harvesting, the Taylors dry the leaves and make the familiar "smudge sticks" that most people associate with sage, tying each bundle with string. They also render sage down into essential oil for sale or to make Ellen's soothing body butter. As a side business, Ellen also makes and sells tie-dyed clothing and bags just as she's done for decades. 

Seated in the living room of their cozy home with an even larger dog, this one an elderly collie sprawling on the cool tile floor, the Taylors shared why they love this land so dearly.

"I had my first experience with sage when I was 25," Ellen said. "I was absolutely, totally overwhelmed by it — inhaling it, breathing it, smelling it." Both Ellen and Ken aver that sage and marijuana are both sacred medicinal plants. 

But she realized that if too many people harvested it from the wild, the sage would be gone. The couple also knew that if they wanted to remain in their their rocky slice of heaven, they would have to figure out a way to afford it. 

"This property offered us a lot of peace," said Ken Taylor, also decked out in a tie-dyed shirt. "But we came here knowing we had to make money to keep the place."

He is a lifelong organic farmer who passed his organic food company on to his son, Robin, who owns the only other sage farming operation in San Diego County. 

The sage farm, along with camping rentals and tie-dyed items, keeps the Taylors afloat and allows them to enjoy the quiet surroundings and starry nights.  

Ken Taylor acknowledged that some Native people don't like them selling sage, but at least one local tribe purchases sage from SageWinds. 

The Taylors are both over 80. Ken has had several back surgeries and even Ellen is starting to feel a bit older. The farm is currently on the market, and the couple hopes to sell it to another dedicated sage enthusiast.

"I'd hate to have to leave it." said Ken Taylor, "but you know, things change. People get old."

Other native plants under attack from poachers, foragers

White sage isn’t the only native plant whose numbers are in rapid decline because of poaching and foraging in Southern California and Baja California. Meza Calles said stands of Mojave yucca are being obliterated in ejidos in Baja California.

Tribes deal with similar issues in Riverside and San Diego counties.

Gerald Clarke lives in the home his grandfather built on the Cahuilla Reservation in Riverside County. The modest structure overlooks a large grassland dotted by black cattle contentedly grazing. It is dwarfed by the large Quonset hut-like metal studio he uses to produce his paintings, metal art and the large Cahuilla baskets made with crushed aluminum cans that he’s known for. A cottonwood tree towers overhead. A solar panel array in a corner of the homestead provides shade for chickens that made their escape from the nearby chicken coop.

Clarke shows off his Indian tobacco plants. The Cahuilla peoples use the endemic species (Nicotiana quadrivalis) with its distinctive five-pointed star for prayer, and the star pattern appears on their baskets, he said. Sage is also important to the Cahuilla, who use it for medicinal purposes and to clean out closed-in homes at the end of winter. 

But Clarke has seen people who recently moved from the city to rural Anza dig up entire yuccas to transplant in their yards.

"I saw someone coming on the road with their pickup truck and they had a yucca all bloomed out, the stalk and the blooms in the back of their truck," he said. "They don’t realize that once they bloom, the yuccas die.”  

This and other such depredations has left some Native people leery of sharing their cultures.

"You're proud of your culture, you want to share it just so they understand," Clarke said. "But then at the same time, you want to hold onto it because people will abuse it."

Down the road from Anza, Pala nestles among valley oaks, manzanita and mixed conifers, and other verdant flora in a narrow portion of the San Luis Rey River Valley beneath the town's eponymous mountain.

The town is home to the Pala Band of Mission Indians, composed of Cupeño and Luiseño peoples. Among the 1,100 residents are 918 enrolled tribal members and a strong connection to the region's history and cultures. That includes white sage, acorns and basketry plants.

Chris Nejo works for Pala Tribal Chairman Robert Smith on various issues and serves on the tribal cultural resource committee.

"We work with California State Parks and the U.S. Forest Service," he said. After a couple of speed bumps with the state park, Nejo said the process works well as tribal members gather needed plants for an annual feast. But not everybody follows procedure, and that makes it harder for Indigenous peoples to gather what they need for ceremonies, feasts or subsistence. 

Tribes especially worry about the wholesale foraging of acorns. Bands of foragers camp out on the western slopes of Mount Palomar in North San Diego County to harvest acorns.

Nejo said he doesn't mind sharing cultural resources. "Just don't take them all," he said.

But foragers don’t just take enough for themselves. They rake the ground completely, taking all the acorns to sell in  Asian food stores in San Diego County. When local tribes come to harvest acorns, they find the trees completely stripped.

"Part of it has to do with climate change because of the warmer temperatures that we're experiencing now and the drought," Nejo said. "It seems like all plants are dying off and it's harder and harder to find some of the resources that we need."

The Pala tribe is considering a move to try to co-manage lands with state and federal agencies. Nejo said that would help supplement agency resources to manage lands. Also, he said, "Sharing our own traditional ecological knowledge with them could really help improve the health of the environment and through resiliency."

Foragers can get a permit to collect plants or plant material for $20 on Forest Service land. But the agency set a $300 limit for harvested plant value. On the other hand, poachers pay just a few cents a pound to poor, mostly undocumented people who venture out to harvest illegal sage while selling 1-ounce bundles of sage called smudge sticks for at much as $10 each online or to local retailers. Nejo also said permits don't allow for commercial sales, just for personal gathering. 

Foy emphasized the role wildlife officers play in saving species from doom. "There would be no sturgeon, no salmon, no bighorn sheep or pronghorn without wildlife officers patrolling," he said. 

In 2020, a group of tribal elders and plant experts wrote to California State Assemblyman James Ramos, a Democrat and the only California Indian currently serving in the state legislature, asking for help in further protecting the plant.

"White sage fields are now sacrifice zones for the reckless global commodification of the plant," the group wrote. Tongva elder Craig Torres wrote, "If we don’t fight to protect the plants and to protect the land, they’re no longer there for us."

Ramos was unavailable for comment. 

Nejo said legislation may be needed to deter poaching. "We (also) need to educate the public because a lot of the reasons this poaching is going on is because people are buying sage," he said. "It's trendy right now to burn a sage bundle and bring good vibes to your house, your life."

Nejo said imitating Native ceremonies is mocking prayer and is cultural appropriation, but, he said, "I think we can help bring awareness to the poaching that's going on and the importance of sustainable harvesting."  

Eric Ortega thinks that one strategy to deter poachers is requiring them to learn about the cultures they're damaging.

"Maybe as part of that legislation we could require somebody who was poaching to take a cultural class, do to them like what they did to us at boarding school?" said Ortega, a Cupeño language instructor and volunteer docent at the cultural center. 

At the end of the climate summit, a young man from Pala arrived with a huge box of white sage grown in his yard. He handed out stalks of the fragrant sage to people as they left.

Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West. Reach Krol at debra.krol@azcentral.com. Follow her on Twitter at @debkrol. 

Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation.

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