Is Palo Santo Endangered? (Published 2019) (2024)

Palo santo — the aromatic wood that has been used for traditional healing and in spiritual ceremonies in indigenous and mestizo Latin American cultures for centuries — has seen a growth in commercial popularity alongside concerns about its conservation status.

Its popularity within the mainstream self-care community is driven by its warm scent when burned as an incense and oblique promises to clear a space of “bad vibes.” Memes portraying palo santo as being a couple packs of incense away from extinction are prolific. Some even claim there are only 250 trees left. The reality isn’t quite so grim but is certainly complicated.

What, exactly, is palo santo?

The tree species being used in the wellness world is called bursera graveolens, which grows all over the Americas including Mexico, Peru, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Galápagos Islands and plentifully in mainland Ecuador. To get palo santo of the best quality, the wood must be harvested in a certain way. “They come to a ripe age at 50 to 70 years old. That’s relatively short. Once the tree dies of natural causes, it has to be left for a minimum of five to eight years for the oils in the heartwood to mature enough to make quality incense,” said Jonathon Miller Weisberger an ethnobotanist and author of “Rainforest Medicine: Preserving Indigenous Science and Biodiversity in the Upper Amazon..” That fallen, aged wood is then processed into sticks used as incense. Watch out for synthetic palo santo, where chemicals are used to produce the signature palo santo scent. We don’t know how much is out there, but read the fine print on packaging. It will typically say “synthetic.”

Is palo santo endangered?

Palo santo is not endangered. This month, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for the first time released a review of bursera graveolens’s conservation status and declared it “of least concern.”

So why the confusion?

A few factors are at play. The first: a case of mistaken identity. A totally different species, bulnesia sarmientoi, is also commonly known as “palo santo” and grows in the Gran Chaco region of South America. Its dark, mahogany-lookalike wood is used for its essential oils and in making products like furniture. And that tree is in fact threatened and may be confused with bursera graveolens when people are researching the topic online.

There’s also the matter of regional versus international status. The IUCN which has declared bursera graveolens of least concern takes global populations of a species into consideration when making its assessment. But national governments determine a plant’s regional conservation status, meaning a plant can be listed as endangered in one country and not another. The online rumors may date back to 2005, when Peru listed its palo santo as endangered.