On February 21, 2006, NPR's Morning Edition teamed with a National Geographic Radio Expedition to China to describe the work of Jan Salick, PhD, an ethnobotanist from the Missouri Botanical Garden. Dr. Salick is partnering with the Chinese Institute of Botany to study the problem of over-harvesting of mountain vegetation. The Chinese government hopes to develop a profitable pharmaceutical industry in the Yunnan province, but with a firm commitment to conservation to protect the source of potential new medicines. Many of these medicinal plants are threatened both by global warming and by increasing global demand. Fortunately, conservation is a value already built into the Tibetan culture. Because plants are considered to be both medicinal and spiritual, large "sacred" sites are left untouched by modern life. Dr. Salick has found that useful, endemic plant species are much more common in these sacred sites than in surrounding ones. Traditional Tibetan doctors travel high into the mountains to collect medicinal plants for their patients. This local use does not affect plant populations significantly, according to the NPR story. But the revival of Tibetan culture in China and the renewed interest in traditional medicine have created a growing international demand for these medicinal plants. More than half the species, nearly 6000 plants in the Yunnan province, are used for medicinal purposes and an estimated 4 billion people worldwide are buying them.

—Nancy Dennis

Source

Arnold E. Sacred Protection for Medicinal Plants [transcript]. NPR Morning Edition. February 21, 2006. Available in audio at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5222424. A written transcript of the NPR story can be obtained for $3.95 at http://www.npr.org/transcripts.

See feature article "Tibetan Herbal Medicine: Traditional Classification and Utilization of Natural Products in Tibetan Materia Medica" by Alessandro Boesi, PhD; Francesca Cardi, PhD