A community member from Bandung, Java, working with Cibodas Botanic Garden to collect Cibotium specimens that were dug out and left by poachers and bringing them to an ex situ nursery. © Joachim Gratzfeld, BGCI.
The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation provided a grant of £30,000 in 2007/08. Having supported the first stage of Botanic Gardens Conservation International’s (BGCI) Botanical Safety Nets for Medicinal Plants project, The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation went on to support the next stage.
Part of this stage was the publication of two themed issues of BGJournal. The Conserving Forest Biodiversity issue (published January 2008) highlights the roles of botanic gardens and arboreta in forest conservation – for example through conserving forests in situ and cultivating globally threatened trees. The issue on Conserving Urban Biodiversity (to be published July 2008) will emphasise the conservation roles of the urban botanic garden – such as influencing municipal leaders towards using local species for amenity planting.
The second part of the project focuses on practical conservation. Based on the priority plants for conservation action identified in the first stage of the project, recovery programmes were initiated during 2008 for Cibotium barometz in Indonesia, and for Stephania dielsiana and Ardisia gigantifolia in Vietnam. BGCI’s local partners on this project are Baturraden and Cibodas Botanic Garden, Java and Ba Vi National Park and Hanoi University of Pharmacy, Vietnam.
These species are a significant medicinal resource in their native countries, in traditional herbal medicine and industrial pharmacy (used in the production of anti-inflammatory drugs). All offer an important source of income to sustain livelihoods of local communities.
Detailed species surveys were carried out for all three species and potential areas for reintroductions identified. Plant material is now being collected and propagated in ex situ plantations in botanic and home gardens by local communities. The recovery work will create public awareness about the role of these plant resources for local livelihoods and help to directly develop economic benefits for local communities and reduce harvest pressure on threatened wild populations of these medicinal plants.
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