Then (1979), Plants of the Gods
Plants of the Gods: Conservation Emergency
Schultes and Hofmann warned that the psychoactive plant knowledge of indigenous communities was being lost faster than it could be documented. The investigation they called urgent had little time to proceed.
reversed
The Amazon has lost approximately 20% of its forest cover since 1979. An estimated one indigenous language (the primary carrier of ethnobotanical knowledge) is now lost every two weeks globally. However, the field Schultes established has expanded dramatically: the Society of Ethnobiology has thousands of members; multiple databases of indigenous plant knowledge have been created with community consent; the field of 'citizen science ethnobotany' has emerged. The Amazonian Plant Medicines Project at ICEERS is creating formal repositories. The race against time Schultes described is still ongoing and still being lost at the macro scale, while individual documentation efforts accelerate.
Sources
- Schultes & Hofmann, Plants of the Gods (1979)
- Mace, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005)
- INPA Amazon Biodiversity Reports (2023)