Issue: 71 Page: 47
Tibetan Medicinal Plant Conservation Airs on NPR's Morning Edition
by Nancy Dennis
HerbalGram. 2006; 71:47 American Botanical Council
Tibetan Medicinal Plant Conservation Airs on NPR's Morning Edition
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
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