Medicinal Plants

Can Utilization and Conservation Coexist?
by Jennie Wood Sheldon, Michael j. Balick, and Sarah A. Laird

This title is volume 12 of Advances in Economic Botany. Plants have been the source of folk medicines for centuries. The acquisition of plant material to meet the large-scale demands of the herbal and pharmaceutical industries has applied added pressures to plant resources, straining and degrading them as a result. The authors have selected several plant species valued in traditional and contemporary medical practice to illustrate the impact of over-harvesting on natural and human forest communities. They use case histories to discuss the most pressing issues and present local models for addressing these issues. The authors conclude that our dependence on medicinal solutions to health problems will dictate a policy of cooperation among traditional, herbal, and pharmaceutical interests in the search for more balanced harvesting and conservation methods.

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