Displaying 1 - 3 of 3
Perspectives of diverse constituencies need to be incorporated when developing conservation strategies. In Menri (Medicine Mountains) of the Eastern Himalayas, Tibetan doctors and professional botanists were interviewed about conservation of useful plants. We compare these two perspectives and find they differ significantly in conservation priorities (Wilcoxon Signed Ranks P < 0.05), both in how they prioritized, as well as the priorities themselves. Tibetan doctors first consider which plants are most important to their medical practice and, then secondarily, the conservation status of these plants. Additionally, perceptions of threatened medicinal plants differ among Tibetan doctors who received medical training in Lhasa, who were local trained, and who were self-taught. In contrast, professional botanists came to a consensus among themselves by first considering the conservation status of plants and then considering use. We conclude that, in order to effect community based conservation, opinions from both Tibetan doctors and professional botanists should be considered in establishing conservation priorities and sustainable conservation programs. Furthermore, we set our own research agenda based on combined perspectives.
Tibetans in five villages in the Mount Khawa Karpo area of the Menri (Meili Xueshan in Chinese) range, Northwest Yunnan, People's Republic of China, were interviewed about their knowledge of a number of medicinal plants and their uses. There was large variation in people's knowledge with significant differences among the villages and between men and women. Most of the reported knowledge focused on a small number of commercial plants and their uses. In comparison with Tibetan doctors, villagers generally knew fewer applications and focused on general health remedies. Many people collected medicinal plants for their own use as well as for sale, but also obtained medicinal plant remedies from markets and Tibetan doctors, and often used traditional Tibetan healthcare in conjunction with biomedical treatment.
[Tibetan medicine historically has had multiple medical lineages, despite ancient, shared literary medical canons. However, since the second half of the 20th century in Tibet, increasing state control and commoditization has lead to centralization and standardization of Tibetan medicine. Here we investigate how much variation in the use of medicinal plants remains in contemporary Tibetan medicine. Medicinal plants used and/or sold by fifteen Tibetan medical institutions, markets, and doctors, as well as two additional non-Tibetan markets, are inventoried and vouchered (where allowed). The data are ordered by Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling. Four distinct groups are defined: (1) government recognized Tibetan medical institutions and their disciples both in Lhasa and elsewhere, (2) local herbal doctors near Mt. Khawa Karpo, eastern Himalayas, (3) Tibetan medicinal markets in Lhasa and near Mt. Khawa Karpo, and (4) non-Tibetan medicinal markets near Dali and Kunming, Yunnan. This clearly documents the plurality of Tibetan medical traditions-official, local, and market-while differentiating these from non-Tibetan markets.]