Plants for life: - Sacred Seeds Sanctuary

Harvesting Prunus africana.allow medicinal plant products to beengineered to a consistent and highstandard, infinitely more appropriate forstandardised pharmaceutical use.The cultivation, management andenrichment planting of high value plantsis therefore an important strategy to meetconsumer demands and reduce theimpacts of markets on biodiversity.However, cultivation often requires majorinputs for a far-off return in a fluctuatingmarket characterised by ‘fads’. Thoughseveral medicinal plants are cultivated ona large scale (Arnica montana, Hamamelisvirginiana, Panax quinquefolius andCatharanthus roseus to name a few) it isnot economically feasible to commerciallycultivate all of the medicinal plants thatare threatened in the wild. (It should benoted that, despite cultivation, several ofthese species were also considered aspriorities for further conservation attentionin the wild, see Annex 5). There is littleincentive to bring into cultivation speciesthat are required in relatively smallvolumes, are slow growing, are believedto be more potent in their wild form or donot command sufficiently high prices.Moreover, there are social, economic andecological benefits to wild harvest. Asmentioned, since wild collection is mostlycarried out in low-wage countries and bylow-income, underprivileged groups it’s achance for the poorest of people to get atleast some income, despite having no land.Wild harvest also gives an economic valueto ecosystems and habitats and thusprovides an incentive for the protection ofsomething much larger than just themedicinal plant. Though theconsequences of collecting activity are stillvery little understood, the involvement oflocal people in sustainable managementpractices increases both their desire andability to protect wild populations fromover-exploitation. Of course, theassumption here is that stocks aresufficient, demand will remain constantand the structures and dynamics withinlocal communities will remain stable.Rauvolfia serpentinaRauvolfia serpentina (Indiansnakeroot, Sarpaghanda) is member ofthe dogbane family, found in India,Pakistan and south east Asia.“The primary folk use for the extractwas as a means of attaining states ofintrospection and meditation, andIndian holy men, including MahatmaGhandi, were habitual users of thedrug”(Mann, 1992).But the plant is also an importanthealer, used for stomach disorders,snakebite and epilepsy. R. serpentinais also the source of the alkaloidresperine, which revolutionized thetreatment of hypertension in the 1950sand is still commonly prescribed today.Chemically similar to serotonin,resperine was also used to treat severemental illnesses due to its powerfulsedative properties.Once found in most of tropical India,by 1998 it was confined to a range ofless that 5,000km 2 ; with an area of wildpopulation occupancy said to be lessthan 500km 2 (Mamgain et al. 1998).Export was banned by the IndianMinistry of Commerce in 1994, and inNepal in 2001 (Aryal, no date) andtrade is now less than it was in pastIt should be noted that both large-scalecultivation and unsustainable wild harvestlead to genetic erosion. When cultivated,artificial changes (to intensify theconcentration of certain compounds)often occur very quickly, unlike in nature.In the short term the desired results areachieved but, in terms of geneticdiversity, there may be long term negativeconsequences. It is a diverse gene poolthat contributes to the ability of speciesor populations to maintain resistance todiseases and to adapt to a changingclimate. Environmental conditions atevery level are constantly changing, andonly diversity can ensure that someindividuals will be able to adapt to thesechanges.CITES and medicinal plantsThe Convention on International Trade inEndangered Species of Wild Fauna andFlora (CITES) provides varying degrees ofprotection to more than 33,000 plantspecies. Of these, about 240 aredecades (CITES, 2005).However the rapiddecline and isolatednature of snakerootpopulations means thatwild genetic stock isseverely depleted.On a small scale India has successfullycultivated snakeroot for many decades,for example in hospital gardens, andcontinues to invest in this area. It isnot clear how successful this has beenhowever, given that the speciesrequires at least two years beforebearing marketable product. Furtherexperiments have shown that netreturns are higher when Rauvolfia isinter-cropped than when grown alone,in this way yielding a year roundharvest and down-playing the slowearly growth of the species(Maheshwari, 1985).Rauvolfia serpentina is recorded incultivation in 22 botanic gardens(PlantSearch database). However, littleis known about the genetic diversity ofsuch cultivated stock and accessionsin genebanks. A genetic study of theplants in botanic garden collections willbe encouraged by BGCI with a view todeveloping a strategy for therestoration of wild populations.medicinal (Schippmann, 2001) eventhough only approximately 30 have beenlisted specifically because of concernover their trade as medicine. Theintention of CITES is to promote asustainable trade in listed species.Plants for life: Medicinal plant conservation and botanic gardens 13