MEDICINAL PLANT CONSERVATION AREA, MEDICINAL PLANTS

DEVELOPMENT AREA

The MPCA program of India was carried out by FRLHT in four different stages
I Stage
Funding Agency – DANIDA – Danida International Development Agency
States Covered: Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu
Approach: Habitat with rich medicinal Plant Diversity

But as the project progressed they realized that medicinal plants which
required conservation intervention that is Species of significant conservation
concern where not covered so they established additional MPCA for the
species Eg. Nambikovil MPCA in Agasthyamalai range of Tamil Nadu for
Janakia arayalpathra Annapady MPCA in Kerala for Utleria salacifolia.
Total no of MPCA established:
II Stage
Funding Agency: CCF-I : Country Co-operation Frame work
States Covered: Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh
Approach: Habitat with Rich medicinal Plant Diversity.
Total no of MPCA established: 21
III stage
Funding Agency: CCF-II : Country Co-operation Frame work
States Covered: Rajasthan, West Bengal, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh
Approach: High conservation concern medicinal Plant species
Total no of MPCA established: 28 MPCA’s were established which were
traditionally known for high medicinal diversity across different forest types.
IV Stage
Funding Agency: GEF – Global Environment Facility
States covered: Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakand and Chattisgarh
Approach: Globally Significant Medicinal Plants i.e endemic medicinal plants
with narrow distribution and high commercial importance.
Here the concept changed from MPCA to Field Gene banks have an area of
1200 ha with 200 ha of core zone and rest being buffer zone.
In total and 55 MPCA were established across India with Diversity focus and
45 were established with Species focus.

Medicinal plant Development Areas

During the implementation of DANIDA sponsored project on in-situ conservation of

medicinal plant, it came out that people’s participation in conservation efforts would
be limited if returns from participation were not adequate. Although some
intangible benefits were available for in-situ conservation efforts in terms of soil and
water conservation. One of the ways to provide benefits to the communities was
through delimiting buffer zones along the MPCAs. These buffer zones were to be
managed by primarily by local communities for augmenting populations of native
medicinal plants for eventual use and economic benefits. The buffer zone concept
was to identify degraded forest patches as near the MPCA as possible and take up
their development under available JFM guidelines as Medicinal Plants Development
Areas. The MPDA’s were, therefore degraded forest areas located as near the MPCA
as possible taken for for conserving and developing native medicinal plant diversity
through local communities under JFM principles. The harvest from these areas were
made available to the local communities as per existing JFM guidelines. The MPDA
concept was therefore, an add on to the MPCA programme and emerged as a result
of long drawn interactions with local communities during progression of the project.

In all, 12 MPDA’s were established under project, which had to be established in

areas located at distance from the MPCAs. The first model of MPDAs involved
enrichment planting of aromatic plants occurring in the areas, periodic harvesting of
produce and distilling the same for essential oils for sale. In the second model,
degraded forest areas were taken up for restoration through planting of native
medicinal trees, shrubs and herbs. The third model involved clearance of bushy
vegetation and planting the cleared areas at wide spacing with mixture of medicinal
plants. In yet another model developed towards the end of project period , a cost
effective approach for MPDA was tried. Under this approach, a conservation
augmentation of medicinal plants was taken up as a regular programme in selected
JFM areas in Tamil Nadu, besides involving village community, Women self-group,
micro credit groups, local healers and NGS were also effectively involved.