by Jane Goodall
I got some of the answers from Dr. Mark Plotkin of the Amazon Conservation Team, a Westerner who has spent three decades studying the relationship between the plants and the shamans of the Amazon rain forest. Ever since he first went there as a young man as part of a group studying crocodilians, and was introduced to the indigenous tribes by Dr. Richard E. Schultes, he was hooked—on plants, on the indigenous people, and on the Amazon. Since then he has been learning about the many medicinal plants that are used in the forests, as well as searching for new plants that can heal. And it was he who drew my attention to the fact that certain Western drug companies had sometimes made huge profits from medicines derived from tropical plants and animals. And they had learned about some of these, including curare, from local tribal peoples.
Mark and other ethnobotanists (scientists who study the plant lore and customs of people), who were concerned about the plight of many of the indigenous tribes—their forest environment increasingly destroyed, their cultures compromised, their lands seized—started to wonder whether it might be possible to create regulations regarding collection of indigenous plants that would not only benefit the tribes but also help conservation efforts.
Mark Plotkin (right) has spent a quarter of a century learning about and documenting the indigenous wisdom of the Amazon. Here he attends a recent unprecedented gathering of shamans from seven tribes. They realize that it is desperately important to share their knowledge, to pass it on, to preserve it before it is too late. (CREDIT: MARK PLOTKIN)
They began working with other organizations and international lawyers to develop new guidelines to ensure that all parties get a fair deal. As a result, those who now search for specimens for possible medicinal, agricultural or industrial use—known as bioprospectors—must comply with various regulations or they could incur severe penalties, including imprisonment.
It is a complex system, comprising international treaties, national laws, and a good deal of professional self-regulation. The collectors must get all necessary permissions and agree to certain conditions, to ensure that the indigenous people of the forest, as well as the resource country, get a fair share of any profits. And if material is removed illegally (biopiracy), the resource country can recover all or some of the profits made from its use. But although these regulations have certainly helped, there are still many threats to the well-being of both plants and people.
One of the most powerful voices speaking out against the overexploitation, or even theft, of indigenous wisdom by Western corporations is the philosopher and environmental activist Dr. Vandana Shiva. Of particular concern for her is the patenting of products derived from an indigenous plant. She sees this as a new sort of colonialism: “In the old way they took over the land—now they are taking over life.”
She describes the successful efforts of American companies to patent a chemical found in the neem tree for use as a pesticide. It began in 1971 when American timber importer Robert Larson brought neem seeds to the United States and was able to extract the active pesticide ingredient (an isolated molecule named azadirachtin). He got a patent, and seventeen years later sold it to the pharmaceutical giant W. R. Grace & Co.
Since then, patents for neem-tree products have been granted to companies in many countries, including India. W. R. Grace, owning some of these companies, set up a base of operations in India and tried to buy the technology of Indian scientists who were working to develop their own products from the neem tree—not surprisingly, there was strong opposition.
Meanwhile W. R. Grace continued to develop new neem-derived products. Vandana Shiva was incensed. In one of her many articles she writes, “Grace’s aggressive interest in Indian neem production has provoked a chorus of objections from Indian scientists, farmers and political activists who assert that multinational companies have no right to expropriate the fruit of centuries of indigenous experimentation and several decades of Indian scientific research.”
Of course, all this has led to heated and ongoing debates, spanning many continents. Should it be possible to patent a substance derived from a wild plant? And how do we define intellectual property when it is connected to indigenous medicinal plants?
We must be grateful to the scientists who extract medicines from the earth’s healing plants. But we must recognize, too, that it is important that indigenous communities in the source areas be able to maintain their cultural traditions and practice their own healing skills. It is essential also to protect the plants themselves and their environment, and people are more likely to care about and nurture their plants if they see there is value in doing so—if we help them to get some share of the dollars that can be made by the pharmaceutical companies, governments, and private investors. Only in this way can we hope to protect the diversity of plant life upon which, ultimately, we all depend. Unfortunately, though, many medicinal plants are threatened by overharvesting.
We Are Losing Our Medicinal Plants
My Native American friend Chitcus, a medicine man of the Karuk tribe in California, always uses kishwoof in a small ceremony. Kishwoof is a root that is traditionally used for healing and “smudging,” a ritual in which smoke from burning various sacred or medicinal plants is used to purify. Chitcus smudges me by burning kishwoof in an abalone shell. He moves a bald eagle feather through the smoke repeatedly and then taps me with it, slowly moving around my body and chanting a blessing. He pays special attention to my feet because, he says, they have to take me so many miles around the world!
Just before the last time Chitcus and I met, he went to gather more kishwoof from the place where he had gathered the root for the past twenty-five years, and where his uncle had harvested it some thirty-five years before that. They had always taken only amounts sufficient for their immediate needs. But on this occasion, Chitcus told me, he found that the whole area had been desecrated, stripped of nearly all plants. He eventually discovered that “pickers” had been sent out in the spring to collect roots, which were then ground up and sold by herbalists.
The pickers “have harvested all of the sacred old Master Roots!” Chitcus told me. “Now the hillsides stand bare with nothing but potholes all over the ground.” He and his sons now have to climb to very high, almost inaccessible places to gather the material they need—only taking a little from each plant so that it can regenerate.
Chitcus also told me how the same zealous overcollection had once threatened the Pacific yew, a tree that is widely used by Native American tribes for making bows and other utility objects. It is also highly valued as a medicinal plant and used in smudging ceremonies. Chitcus had been told of the many “pickers” sent into the forests of the Pacific Northwest to collect bark for Western medicine. His mother, also a healer, had explained how the pickers would cut the tree to the ground so much so that it could not regenerate.
That story began in 1960, when the National Cancer Institute, in partnership with USDA, commissioned several botanists to collect plants that could be tested for their anticancer potential. One of the samples was a piece of bark from a Pacific yew. The yew was one of the few that showed promise: more bark was collected, and five years later the active ingredient—taxol—had been isolated. As work continued, more bark was needed—and, as Chitcus remembered, the collecting process had resulted in the death of the trees. Over the next twenty years encouraging human trials began. More and more bark was needed, more and more wild yew trees were killed. The bark of one tree only provided enough taxol for about one dose. By the mid-1980s taxol was being used to treat breast, ovarian, and cervical cancer.
This was very exciting, but when the scientists announced that by 1987 they might need sixty thousand pounds of bark to meet the demand for the drug, serious environmental concerns were raised. How long could the wild yew trees sustain harvesting of this sort? Obviously it was imperative to find some other way to make the drug, and several scientists around the world intensified their efforts. As a result, by 1993 a successful product had been developed using plant-cell-fer
mentation technology. An effective cancer medicine no longer relied on collecting bark from the Pacific yew.
Technology and know-how have increased, and it is not always necessary to destroy wild plants to create new drugs. Instead another threat looms—the growing global love affair with herbal medicine.
Ayurvedic medicine originated in India and is considered one of the oldest healing traditions in the world. This holistic approach to health incorporates many plant-based therapies, and most of the herbs are still harvested from the wild.
When this medicine became more popular in the West, exports grew rapidly, and suddenly, in 2010, it was found that 93 percent of the most important wild-harvested herbs were endangered, mostly because of reckless harvesting by those who sought immediate profit. Collectors were tearing the whole plant out of the ground, whether or not all parts were needed, thus reducing the chance for the harvested area to recover.
Some of the most common over-the-counter herbal remedies in the United States, such as American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius), goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis), and echinacea, also known as purple coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia), are now listed as endangered, mainly because of the increase of unsustainable harvesting methods.
Passing on the Wisdom
What a tragedy that just as we are beginning to appreciate the wisdom and knowledge of traditional healers and shamans, so many of the plants are vanishing—or gone. Fortunately, people are waking up. Old Mzee Rubondo, the traditional healer of the Waha tribe in Tanzania, realized he had to do something about his vanishing medicinal plants on the day he had to travel 160 miles to find one that he desperately needed—a plant that had once grown close to home. He told me that was an expensive journey that he could ill afford—the loss of the forest was a personal loss that was also hindering his work and affecting the health of his community.
That was when he decided to take part in our TACARE programs. He knew about them—he told us that our conservation initiatives were really making a difference, and that in all the places where he had searched for particular plants, people had talked about our work and were more willing to help him. Mzee Rubondo, and many of the other traditional healers, are now taking an active role in collecting and protecting medicinal plants, and helping to restore forest habitat.
In Tanzania the Roots & Shoots members of Sokoine Primary School are learning how to identify and draw their local indigenous medicinal plants. (CREDIT: SMITA DHARSI)
Mzee Rubondo was particularly appreciative of JGI’s environmental education program, as he, along with other healers in the area, believe that if people know which plants are used to treat different diseases, they will be more likely to help in protecting them. They all encourage Roots & Shoots club members to learn the names and uses of the plants that grow in the area. They are desperate to pass their wisdom down to the next generation.
During my last visit to Kigoma I visited the Roots & Shoots group of Sokoine Primary School. They showed me the regeneration that has taken place in the fifteen-acre forested area they have been protecting since 2004. Club members, with the help of local volunteer Isaack Ezekia, have been identifying all the rare plants growing there, especially the medicinal plants. Isaack told me they are so enthusiastic that when he offered to hold a workshop during their holidays, they all wanted to take part. He taught them more about the uses of the plants, their scientific names, and how to draw them. Isaack did not realize that the father of one of the pupils, Fedrick Fowahedi, was a well-known traditional healer, and was apprehensive when the child said he was taking specimens of the plants home to ask his father if what he had learned was true. To Isaack’s immense relief he was told he had got it all right.
Now the members are eager to write a science book for children that will include the names and uses of all the traditional medicinal plants found in the forest.
In the Amazon, too, says Mark Plotkin, there is a race to preserve the ancient cultures of the indigenous people before it is too late. The shamans, traditionally leaders as well as medicine men and women, were finding it increasingly difficult to pass on their knowledge. As in so many parts of the world, the younger generations tended to scorn the old traditions as being irrelevant in a rapidly modernizing world.
The Amazon Conservation Trust was established, in part, to try to help the medicine men and women with the vital task of passing on their wisdom to the next generation of their tribe. An imaginative program pairs a shaman with a young apprentice whom he can teach about medicinal plants. They make a medicinal plant garden, and the apprentice, if he can write, keeps a written record of the shaman’s knowledge—for which he gets a small stipend. The program is working. There are now regular gatherings of shamans from the northern Amazon, who meet to share knowledge, discuss problems, and celebrate successes.
Tanzanian Roots & Shoots volunteer Isaack Ezekia (center) is teaching the local primary school children about their medicinal plants. R&S member Fedrick Fowahedi (left), the eleven-year-old son of a respected traditional healer, is one of those responsible for caring for the school’s forest garden. He has been watching over this endangered tree that he had found and transplanted in the garden, and was eager to explain how its leaves and bark are used to cure a variety of illnesses. (CREDIT: NICOLAS IBARGUEN)
I suspect that some of those shamans share the sentiments of old Mzee Rubondo in Tanzania. When I asked what he thought about the future of his work, he replied, “We cannot afford to lose our plants, because agreeing to lose them is like agreeing to die. But if we replant lost species and conserve the forests, then our plants will survive—and so will we.”
Hope for Future Harvests
Fortunately, this kind of understanding is spreading, and practices are changing. In India, where the Ayurvedic medicinal plants are so threatened, the government has defined “sustainable harvest protocols,” designed to prevent people from ripping out entire crops or decimating a habitat. It has also created conservation areas in India where there is the greatest diversity of medicinal plants, and hired locals to monitor and protect these areas.
In Sri Lanka, where overharvesting is also threatening medicinal plants, the government is developing community-farming projects for growing Ayurvedic herbal plants. The sale of these plants directly benefits local economies, and helps to provide much needed support for the upkeep of the Mihintale Sanctuary, believed to be the oldest wildlife sanctuary in the world. Established by King Devanampiya Tissa some 2,200 years ago, in the third century BC, there are stone inscriptions telling people not to kill animals or destroy trees. And there is a high level of medicinal plant diversity.
Herbal medicine has been part of the Chinese culture for at least two thousand years, and it has become increasingly popular, both in China itself and throughout much of the Western world. However, this popularity means, unfortunately, that many of China’s medicinal plants have become endangered in the wild. But there is hope—numerous international NGOs are now working closely with villagers to introduce new ways to sustainably harvest medicinal plants while also making a good profit.
During my last visit to China, I was invited, along with a small group, to visit Jane Tsao’s organic farm near Chengdu. After showing us around the fields and greenhouses, Jane took us to a lovely, unspoiled woodland area along the banks of a river, where she is setting up a small nature reserve. As we walked in the shade of the tall trees, following narrow paths through ferns and shrubs of the woodland floor, I noticed a small, dilapidated wooden hut, half-hidden among the trees.
“It was once a forester’s hut,” Jane told us. “Now we are going to restore it and make a tiny education center.” It will provide information about the various local plants and trees that have medicinal properties. And it will also showcase some of the herbalists of the past who were wise in the knowledge of nature.
During my recent visit to an organic farm near Chengdu, I was fascinated to find, pinned to the wall of a disused forester’s hut, this faded print of L
i Shizhen (AD 1518–93). Author of a giant encyclopedia on the uses of plants in medicine, he is widely revered throughout China today as a sort of “patron saint” of Chinese herbal medicine. (CREDIT: JANE GOODALL)
The portraits of those bygone healers, unprotected and faded, were pinned to the walls. I stood looking at them, my mind wandering to the very different China in which they had lived. And it seemed to me that despite their stern demeanor, they were offering a blessing on those who were trying to protect the natural world and the healing plants that they had understood and loved.
Chapter 11
Plants That Can Harm
When scraped, the seedpod of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) oozes the white goo used to make opium. I have heard the seedpod, innocent in itself, called a container for the “dreams of the damned.” (CREDIT: TEUN SPAANS; CUT AND PHOTO MADE FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES)
As I was thinking about this book, I began to ask people, “Which five plants do you think have had the biggest impacts on human history?” Most came up with the primary plants used in agriculture. But a surprising number said cannabis and quite a few mentioned tobacco. Of course they were right—those plants, along with the opium poppy, coca, and others, including plants used to make alcoholic beverages, have indeed impacted tens of millions of human lives around the world. And so I decided that I wanted to talk about the plants behind the addictions that can lead to so much antisocial and self-destructive behavior.
Most of these plants have rich and noble histories, having been used as healing medicines or as part of traditional sacred rituals. The medicines derived from these plants, when used responsibly, can have very positive human benefits. Unfortunately they have been and are most terribly misused. So that, in the minds of many, the plants themselves are associated with drug and alcohol abuse. Yet in and of themselves the plants are innocent.