Herbal plants Extinction by poaching

With the rampant poaching of rare herbs, India is losing not just invaluable medicinal plants but also its millennia-old natural heritage

By Mukesh Khosla

What is common between Indian tigers and herbs that grow wild in the countryside? Both are being targeted by poachers and, like many big-cat species, a vast variety of medicinal herbs are under threat of going extinct.

These “humble herbs” are being poached—for want of a better word —simply because they are hardly humble when it comes to the prices they bring in the global black and grey markets. The Himalayan herb called Yarcha Gumba, for example, which is said to be a cure for sexual problems, goes for Rs 100,000 (about US$ 2,500) a kilogram in the international market. Similarly, Orignum Majorama, which is used in digestive and bronchial medicines, fetches Rs 16,000 (about US$ 400) per kg.

There are anthropological indications that most of these herbs have been part of the Indian ecosystem since 1000 BC. They have been used in the traditional forms of medicine, sometimes even providing solutions to health problems that have defied the lab-tested certainties of modern science.

According to a new study, more than 750 species of these herbal plants face an uncertain future due to overexploitation. In a recent threat assessment exercise, the World Wildlife Fund has placed several herbal plants in India on the critically endangered list.

Deforestation and rapid urbanisation have eroded the natural agroclimatic spaces in which these herbs grow. Overuse, unsustainable cultivation, and illegal exports are the culprits that have exponentially increased the vulnerability of these crucial plants.

Other factors responsible for the depletion of the herbal plants are the complete lack of monitoring and regulatory instruments. There is, ironically enough, scarce information about the importance of these medicinal plants even in the Forest Department—although poachers seem to hardly want for knowledge about precisely what they have been looting.

The great sage Vedavayasa's Science of Life, or Ayurveda, details the curative virtues of hundreds
of herbal drugs that can treat a myriad diseases, depending on an individual’s prakruti, or biological make-up.

In ancient times, traditional healers travelled deep into forests or up near-inaccessible mountains to source these valuable herbs. (Today, most Tibetan healers continue this practice.) Currently, herb cultivation is being attempted in greenhouses where temperature and humidity can be monitored and preset.

Herbalists use almost all parts of a plant—including flowers, seeds, pollen, tissue cultures, fruits, stem joints, wood veneers and wood chips, flowers and by-products—in the preparation of their medicines. It didn’t take the modern pharmaceutical industry long to catch on to nature’s bounty: today, it uses nearly 400 plant species in the production of all manner of medicines. Since pharmaceuticals are by nature rampant, the unchecked consumption of herbal plants is leading to the threat of irreversible scarcity.

In line with the naturopathy wave sweeping through the world, herbal cosmetic products are today in great demand both within India and globally. American pharmaceutical giants are working overtime to patent longtime public property such as Neem, turmeric, Amla and Tulsi, which have both curative and cosmetic qualities.

Experts like Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta of the Medicinal Plants Research Division claim that nestled in these plants and herbs are cures for AIDS and cancer. While that issue might be debatable, what is clear is that if any of these plants becomes extinct, certain medicinal extracts might be lost to humanity forever. “They are living resources, exhaustible if overused,” says Dasgupta. “They can only become sustainable if used with care and wisdom.”

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