Biodiversity, Conservation and Ethnopharmacology

The world's biodiversity, especially plants, is the direct or ultimate source of up to half of the drugs we depend on today and is also the basis of countless traditional medicines that form the primary healthcare delivery system for hundreds of millions of people. This resource base and the traditional knowledge on its use is at risk from habitat loss, biological invasions, unsustainable use and the growing human population. Ethnopharmacologists need to be more proactive in taking steps to help conserve the plants, animals and microorganisms involved and the associated local knowledge about the ways in which they are used. The large numbers of species and the scientific and technical issues involved in their conservation, such as the need to identify, survey and conserve the genetic diversity underlying the chemical variation in their populations, will severely limit how many of them can be the subject of formal conservation actions, either in situ or ex situ. It is essential that local communities should be involved in various kinds of informal community conservation that will help protect their habitats and the sustainable use and long‐term survival of the species being exploited. Attention is drawn to the need for ethnopharmacologists, agencies and the pharmaceutical industry to focus more of their efforts on ensuring that local user communities benefit from the investment in drug exploration and research through improved quality and delivery of their plant‐ or animal‐based medicines.