Conservation status of species used in the UK herbal medicine industry

Societal Impact Statement

Given the ongoing biodiversity crisis, sustainable use and management of medicinal plants is critical. We assessed the conservation status, threats and conservation actions of 298 species sold by UK suppliers to medical herbalists. We found that most species used are unevaluated, representing a gap in conservation knowledge, and of those with assessments, biological resource use and agriculture were the two key threats. More comprehensive evaluation of the extinction risk of medicinal plants is needed, and sustainable management of threatened species, especially through sustainability schemes such as FairWild, would also be beneficial.

Summary

Collection of medicinal plants from the wild has been implicated in the decline of target species abundance in their natural habitats and possible local extinction. However, conservation status differs widely between species used in herbal medicine. Here, we conduct a broad survey of herbal remedies to evaluate the extent to which species involved are at conservation risk.

We created a list of 298 species used in herbal remedies commonly available from online retailers in the United Kingdom. The list was cross-referenced with IUCN and CITES databases to evaluate the extent to which traded species are considered to be threatened, including particular threats faced by the species.

We found that 203 (68.1%) of species used in the UK herbal medicine market are unevaluated by the IUCN. Of the 95 species that had been evaluated, 13 (13.7%) were in categories of Near Threatened (NT) or higher. The most common threats to endangered species were intentional exploitation as biological resources and threats from agriculture relating to non-timber crops. Only seven species (2.4% of the total) are featured on CITES.

The results show that medicinal plants supplying the UK herbal medicine industry lack comprehensive conservation evaluations. Whilst the overall number of endangered species in trade is low, this number may rise if more evaluations are carried out.

We have included a list of species which may be more sustainable alternatives for 11 species that are of conservation concern. We also recommend that herbalists and suppliers increase sourcing from sustainability schemes such as FairWild. Additional work is required to further detail knowledge about the trade of medicinal plants in the WHM industry.