Albanians strip Greek mountains of wild tea and rare flowers

>Greek authorities and conservationists say bands of impoverished Albanians are making regular cross-border forays, illegally harvesting donkey-loads of herbs and medicinal plants. They mostly pick mountain tea — also called ironwort — hawthorn and even primrose, but they are also destroying rare and endangered species in the process.

>The looters then sell the herbs for export to pharmaceutical or cosmetics companies, a business that nets Albanian wholesalers tens of millions annually.

>It's illegal in Greece to pick more than a tiny quantity of wild herbs for personal use in traditional infusions. That ban doesn't exist in Albania, one of Europe's poorest nations. But, more significantly, the plants are usually uprooted in the looters' haste to pick as much as possible and be off undetected. This stops natural regeneration, threatens delicate ecosystems and leaves entire mountainsides denuded.

>Albanians contend the herbs are there and the Greeks don't pick them, so why shouldn't somebody profit?

> Many poor Albanians are crossing the mountains into Greece this year because of an herb shortage in Albania due to freezing temperatures last winter, said Filip Gjoka, president of Albania's Association of Medicinal & Aromatic Plants and owner of an herb and spice trading company.

> quote "There are a lot of herbs in Greece, where they are not collected due to labor force shortages or lack of interest, quote; Gjoka told the AP. "We here collect those herbs, and these people take the risks to support their families. They can bear a few months of jail since there are no other jobs."

> Eleni Maloupa, director of Greece's Institute of Breeding and Plant Genetic Resources in Thessaloniki, says some of the 14 kinds of ironwort that grow in Greece are threatened with extinction and there is a blanket ban on their collection, even in small quantities.