[PCA] April 7 World Health Day: Covid-19 & wild plants

Wed Apr 8 17:03:23 CDT 2020

Dear Abby:

There was a recent interview with Jane Goodall.  She hoped that one good thing that would come out of the pandemic would be a government ban on the sale of  wild animals for food in China.  My contacts in Yunnan have written to say that this is going on right now and it might become permanent,  In Kunming, for example, you are not even allowed to slaughter a live chicken in an open air market anymore.

What we must understand, though, is that the Asian demand for medicinal herbs from the wild was NEVER sustainable. Poaching was going on long before this pandemic (see attached pp.368-370).  If you go to the Himalayas you will see that every time a new road goes through plant thieves come in and deplete target species. Readers need to understand that an awful lot of Chinese herbal medicine resembles the Western concept of "the Doctrine of Signatures."  These people think nothing about going into protected areas including sites maintained by the Kunming Institute of Botany.  Why did a group of young people arrive on their pink motorcycles (see my photo, they hid their faces) to remove every Spirnathes sinensis from a wet meadow?  Because the flowering stalk, as it pushes up in July, resembles an erect penis and is in demand as some sort of male virility treatment.  The activity of these poachers astounds the local Naxi people who have no real use for the plant.  In fact, S. sinensis is now a target because other white, terrestrial, orchid species in this part of the world have become rarer due to over collection.

Peter

________________________________
From: native-plants <native-plants-bounces at lists.plantconservation.org> on behalf of Abby Meyer <abby.meyer at bgci.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 7:36:28 PM
To: native-plants at lists.plantconservation.org <native-plants at lists.plantconservation.org>
Subject: [External] [PCA] April 7 World Health Day: Covid-19 & wild plants

Dear colleagues,

Hope you are well, and that your families and friends are safe.

Today is a World Health Day, and to mark the occasion and draw attention to the role of plants in covid-19 treatment, increasing demand for herbal medicines, and identify priority actions, I would like to share a short paper, which is available here: https://www.traffic.org/news/covid-19-the-role-of-wild-plants-in-health-treatment/<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.traffic.org/news/covid-19-the-role-of-wild-plants-in-health-treatment/__;!!K543PA!fc7ySu4-2QnhTkSsIPKpsR_TBJ9TKsDrMoD9xYIUrPZ2GYIHmYmrCcnyEtoR9b5sKuIt$>

This started as a paper focussed primarily on traditional Chinese medicine official treatment formulations, but expanded to reflect the increasing demand for immune-system supporting ingredients, many of which come from the wild (with little consideration of how sustainable their use and trade is). This of course links directly to the implementation of GSPC, and so I hope you find it relevant.

Please feel free to share with your networks, and I hope this can prompt some more actions around the ‘visibility’ of wild plants use, and the sustainability of wild-sourcing practices. Any of your feedback is very welcome as well!

Nastya

Anastasiya Timoshyna
TRAFFIC | Senior Programme Co-Ordinator – Sustainable Trade

IUCN SSC/Medicinal Plant Specialist Group | Co-Chair
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