Categorizing Wild-Harvested Medicinal Plants for Better Management Decisions

Abstract

Medicinal plants that are collected in the wild may be vulnerable to over-harvest for many different reasons, ranging from the specificity of their habitat requirements to the fluctuations in commercial demand. The United Plant Savers’ At-Risk Assessment Tool has been used to rank the vulnerability of plant species based on answers to questions regarding the five areas: a plant species’ life history, population characteristics, habitat, demand, and method of harvest. The tool has been useful in identifying top conservation priorities, those plants with the highest overall score, but less useful when examining the many plants with “high but not extremely high” vulnerability scores. Students investigated wild-harvested plant species that had previously been assessed with such “high but not extremely high” scores and proposed conservation actions for them. Here we report on how these plant species can be grouped based on management strategy and how well the resulting classification corresponds to the scores for each area. We conclude that for species with “high but not extremely high” total vulnerability scores, the scores for each area are more useful to conservation practitioners than the absolute total score.