Strategic management of medicinal plants in Tamil Nadu: with special reference to conservation of threatened medicinal plants in KMTR (Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve), Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Conservation and Sustainable use of Medicinal Plants can be done by taking upmany types of action. Some of these actions are undertaken directly at the places where theplants grow naturally while others are ex-situ conservation and bio prospecting with less'direct' or passive role.The single most important role for Medicinal Plants in biological conservationappears to be their 'use; to achieve conservation of natural habitat more generally. Itoriginates from the special meaning that Medicinal Plants have to people, related to themajor contributions that they make to many people's lives in terms of health support,financial income, cultural identity and livelihood security. Under the appropriatecircumstances, these values can be transformed into incentive for conservation of thehabitats in which the Medicinal Plants are grown. Realization of this potential will dependgreatly on the existence of assured rights of access to, and use of, the plants by thosemembers of communities whose lives are most closely bound to them.India is very rich in Medicinal Plants resource and also with its traditionalknowledge of medicine. With the onset of globalization, there has been and upsurge in theproduction of plant based medicines, tonics and body care products in recent years. Thishas caused export acceleration of crude medicinal drugs in the international market andIndia being the second following China causing a large number of Medicinal Plants findingits place in the threatened category of plants as classified by International Union for NatureConservation (IUCN).Further, in India forests are overwhelmingly State owned (97pct. of the total forestarea). About 85pct. of the increasing demand for Medicinal Plants is met through wildcollection mainly from these forestlands. The present study identifies that more than 1000species of Indian Medicinal Plants suffer from various degrees of threats of which 172plants need immediate attention of the Government to protect them from further erosion.Yet, peculiarly the conservation and management of Medicinal Plants is not really seen asthe mandate of the Forest department. The Forest Department- the custodian of theMedicinal Plants and their natural habitat still continues its priority for protection andconservation of wild fauna but less or little emphasis is placed on wild flora including theMedicinal plants which give many life saving drugs.There are several other Government departments and NGOs, such as those ofIndian Systems of Medicine of the Ministry of Health and family welfare, both at theCentral and State levels, that control the budget and programme for Medicinal Plantsconservation. Of late there have been some attempts to involve the Forest departments inthe conservation and sustainable harvest of medicinal plants.The problem appears to be lack of specific policy and legal provisions at place withmanagement strategy for conservation of Medicinal Plants by their custodian - the Forestdepartment with whom major shares of this resource lies. Thus the objectives of this studywas made 1) to propose a Policy framework with strategies for conservation andsustainable utilisation of Medicinal Plants 2) to propose enlarging the existing legalprovisions of conservation to include conservation of threatened Medicinal Plants. 3) toprovide a conservation development model for prioritizing the management prescription ofMedicinal Plants 4) to provide species specific recommendations and Action Plan for selectMedicinal Plants species for the study area i.e., the Kalakad Mundandurai Tiger Reserve(KMTR) - the 17th Tiger Reserve of the country located in the southern most districtsnamely Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari of Tamilnadu.With the above objectives, the three research propositions were made namely, 1)the Medicinal Plants resources are getting depleted in their wild habitats. 2) The MedicinalPlants do not get the attention they deserve due to lack appreciation of its value, utility andsurvival status by Forest Department- the custodian. 3) The Forest Department continuesits priority for a) Protection and Conservation of wild fauna but less or little emphasis isplaced on wild flora, b) in excellence of technicalities but less emphasis is placed on Policyvision with skill comptence. To prove the above propositions systematic methodology wasfollowed by identifying and mapping the shares of various stakeholders of MedicinalPlants for collection of data in the field by Questionnaire sgrvey, In-depth interview andboth Questionnaire and interview methods. The collected data from various methods andalso from the literature survey, detailed analysis were made to draw the findings of thisstudy.Based on the above findings, we have developed specific policy recommendationsby proposing strategic management for conservation and sustainable utilisation ofMedicinal plants. We also recommended a few other important issues, which needimmediate attention of the Forest Department so that further erosion of MPs can be sealedand propagation starts. We developed a conservation model in prioritizing stress level for afew select MPs of KMTR to make strategic prescriptions for them along with theirsuggested Action plan to implement in the field as a pilot study.The findings of this study would help the Government to frame policies andimplement them with clear objectives to stop further erosion for Threatened Medicinalplans of the country and to conserve them both for intra and inter generational equity.It is likely that a quarter of all species of Indian plants may be either extinct or onway to extinction within 25 years, and the great majority of the species present now arelikely to be extinct within a century if proper conservation efforts are not in place in time(Raven, 1990).Thus this attempt is made for conserving this selfless plant kingdom of medicinalvalue for all human good.