Revitalizing Traditional Herbal Therapy by Exploring Medicinal Plants: A Case Study of Uttaranchal State in India

Forests play key roles in the lives of people living in both mountains and lowland areas by supplying fresh water and a diversity of valuable forest products. Among the various kinds of forest products available to local people, the use of plant species for therapeutic purposes has gained a tremendous importance in the present century. The importance of plants used in therapy can be evaluated by the estimation of the World Health Organization (WHO) that the present demand for medicinal plants is about US$14 billion a year, and that the demand for medicinal plant-based raw materials is growing at the rate of 15–25% annually. According to the WHO estimates, the demand for medicinal plants is likely to increase from the current $14 billion a year to $5 trillion in 2050. With the growing world demand, the export market for medicinal plant species appears to be growing faster than the Indian domestic market. In India, however, the use of medicinal plants is a centuries-old tradition, and approximately two million traditional health practitioners still use medicinal plants for curing various ailments (Venkatesh 2002)—of these practitioners, a sizeable number regard the Himalayas as a storehouse of varieties of herbal medicines. Located in the Himalayas, the vegetation wealth of the Uttaranchal state of India has received significant attention throughout the ages for curing various chronic human ailments (Gaur 1999). Because they are both a local health commodity and also expected to meet the growing world demand, the majority of medicinal plant species experience high pressures due to over-collection from wild. At the same time, the traditional knowledge on the use of less important medicinal plants and the techniques of making many herbal formulations have declined over the past few decades due to lack of awareness and spread of allopathic medicines (Kala 1998a). Recognizing the present escalating demand for herbal medicines, and also in order to reduce the possibility of bio-piracy and to protect the rights of traditional herbal healers, there is an urgent need to document the various uses of plant species (Udgaonkar 2002). Plants are the major ingredients in most of the medical formulations developed by the traditional healers. Realizing the growing importance of plant-based formulations, the present study aims to document the medicinal plants, their uses, and the various formulations developed by mixing many plant species together. Attempts also were made to find out the possible causes of decline in tradition within the indigenous communities, along with exploring ways to revitalize the tradition.