Journal of Medicinal Plants Research Vol. 7(4), pp. 148-154, 25 January, 2013 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/JMPR DOI: 10.5897/JMPR12.599 ISSN 1996-0875 ©2013 Academic Journals Full Length Research Paper Informants’ consensus on ethnomedicinal plants in Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary of Indian Himalayas Jahangeer A. Bhat, Munesh Kumar*, A. K. Negi and N. P. Todaria Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar Garhwal-246174, Uttarakhand, India. Accepted 31 October, 2012 The present study was carried out in the protected area of Greater Himalayas, Uttarakhand, India. The study was carried out to understand the consensus on medicinal plants by inhabitants of Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary. The study documented 21 plant species that are used medicinally in 17 ailment categories. Out of 21 plant species, 12 species were reported for a single ailment separately and 8 species were reported by informants for more than one ailment. The consensus of informants for the roots and rhizomes were the most frequently used plant parts (68%). The plants which are under rare list in IUCN Red List category observed in the study area are Picrorhiza kurrooa, Aconitium hetrophyllum and Podophyllum hexandrum. The Consensus index factor (Fic) was found to be higher in the Haematological illness category (1.00) followed by Dermatological and Ophthalmological category which was (0.98). Key words: Ethnomedicinal plants, consensus, informants, ailments, Himalaya. INTRODUCTION In India, of the 17,000 species of higher plants, 7500 are Himalaya (Singh and Hajra, 1996), of these, 1,748 known for medicinal uses (Shiva, 1996). The Charak species are known as medicinal plants (Samant et al., Samhita, an age-old written document on herbal therapy, 1998). The state of Uttarakhand is a part of north-western reports on the production of 340 herbal drugs and their Himalaya and has a dense vegetation cover harboring a indigenous uses (Prajapati et al., 2003). Currently, vast range of medicinal plants (Singh et al., 2005). The approximately 25% of drugs are derived from plants and maximum species of medicinal plants have been reported many others are synthetic analogues built on prototype from Uttarakhand (Kala, 2004), followed by Sikkim and compounds isolated from plant species in modern North Bengal (Samant, et al., 1998). pharmacopoeia (Rao et al., 2004). From the very earliest The ongoing growing recognition of medicinal plants is days of civilization, mankind has turned to plants for due to several reasons, including escalating faith in healing, a tradition that has survived the arrival of modern herbal medicine. Allopathic medicines may cure a wide medicine and found new strength at the end of 20th range of diseases; however, their high prices and side- century (Sulivan and Shealy, 1997). Even today, 80% of effects are causing many people to return to herbal the world’s population relies on traditional plant medicine medicines which have fewer side effects (Kala, 2005). (Singh, 2002; Azaizeh et al., 2003). The instant rising demand of plant based drugs is As elsewhere, in India too, the medicinal use of plants unfortunately creating heavy pressure on some selected has been practiced from aeons by various rural and tribal high-value medicinal plant populations in the wild due to communities through the systems of Ayurveda, Siddha over-harvesting. Several of these medicinal plant species and Unani (Gadgil, 1996). So far about 8,000 species of have slow growth rates, low population densities and angiosperms, 44 species of gymnosperms and 600 narrow geographic ranges (Kala, 1998; Nautiyal et al., species of pteridophytes have been reported in the Indian 2002); therefore they are more prone to extinction (Jablonski, 2004). A great deal of traditional knowledge of the use of various plant species is still intact with the indigenous *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]. people and this fact is especially relevant with the Bhat et al. 149 mountainous areas such as the Himalaya due to less sole purpose of eliciting the precious wealth information on the accessibility of terrain and comparatively slow rate of ethnomedicinal uses of plants practiced by the people residing in development (Kala, 2002; Farooquee et al., 2004). The KWLS. Information on plants with ethnomedicinal uses was collected from informants living in villages, shepherds and seasonal documentation of invaluable indigenous knowledge about porters inside wildlife sanctuary. Field surveys and structured medicinal plant species is assuming urgent priority due to interview schedules during 2009 to 2011 were used to elicit secret the recent controversies that have sprung up from the knowledge from the people inhabiting inaccessible hinterland of the illegal bio piracy (Heywood, 1995; Loreau and Oteng, region. Usually, the survey in the study area started with the 2006; Naranjo, 1995; Mukherjee, 2005; Utkarsh, 2001). interview of elderly and experienced persons both men and women. Besides this, the common people of the study area who themselves The precious indigenous knowledge when supplemented have used these plant based medicines for health treatments were and validated by the latest scientific insights, can offer interviewed to prove veracity of the curative features of plants. The new holistic models of sustainable development that are informants were randomly selected for the consensus and the economically viable, environmentally benign and socially survey was conducted based on people’s opinion on the number of acceptable (Shinwari and Gilani, 2003). plants used for a particular ailment. Since ages, through trial and error, people in the Trotter and Logan (1986) developed a method based on the concept of “informant consensus” for identifying potentially effective Himalayan region have learned and practiced the medicinal plants. They compared the total case number for each medicinal usage of plants growing in their close vicinity ailment (number of informants that reported a certain illness) with for treating various ailments. Various studies have been the number of separate remedies for this ailment. The consensus carried out to document the ethnomedicinal uses of plant factor (Fic) gives the relationship between the “number of use- species growing in the region but the consensus of reports in each category (nur) minus the number of taxa used (nt) people regarding the ethnomedicinal cure is completely and the “number of use-reports in each category minus 1” (Heinrich et al., 1998). F is thus calculated using the following formula: lacking. In this backdrop, the main objective of this study ic was to fulfill knowledge gaps in the important area of bio- Fic = nur - nt / nur - 1 cultural diversity and the paper presents an update on plant parts used for various diseases with the consent of The consensus factor (Fic) was used to test the homogeneity of the inhabitants and status of the medicinal plants which is informant(s) knowledge according to the methods described by Trotter and Logan (1986). About 10% of the inhabitants were directly relevant to the welfare of people living in far flung interviewed about their dependence on the forest products, and inaccessible areas of the Kedarnath wildlife especially for medicinal purposes and as the informants regularly sanctuary. visited forests since their childhood so they were well versed with the identification of plants and their use in various ailments. To overcome the language hindrance, the interviews were conducted MATERIALS AND METHODS in the local dialect to avoid communication problems. During the interviews, structured questionnaires were used to Study area obtain information on medicinal plants, including the local name of the plant, plant part used for curing and the diseases for which a Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary (KWLS) was established in 1972 and particular plant is used etc. In field, some ethnomedicinal plants is famous for the endangered Musk Deer. The KWLS is were also identified by the matching of plants with the pictorial field geographically situated between 30° 25' to 30° 41' N, 78° 55' to 79° guide (Murthy, 2011) and specimens of all plants were collected 22' E in the North-eastern part of Garhwal region of Uttarakhand and recorded following the standard methods (Jain and Rao, 1977). state, India. The present study was conducted in the Medicinal plant species were identified using standard literature Madhmaheshwer area which is the interior part of Kedarnath (Gaur, 1999; Naithani, 1984) and doubtful specimens were further Wildlife Sanctuary (30° 35' 42" to 30° 38' 12" N, 79° 10' 00" to 79° verified and submitted at the Herbaria of HNB Garhwal University 13' 00" E). The KWLS is one of the largest protected areas (975 2 (Srinagar, Uttarakhand) and Herbaria of Botanical survey of India, km ) in the Western Himalaya located in Chamoli-Rudraprayag North Zone (Dehradun). districts of Uttarakhand (Singh and Rawat, 2011). It is bordered by During this study, only 21 plants have been encountered in the high mountain peaks; Kedarnath (6940 m), Mandani (6193 m) and consensus of the people for the different medicinal uses. The plants Chaukhamba (7068 m) and extensive alpine meadows that is, which were taken for the present study have also been listed earlier Trijuginarayan, Kham, Mandani, Pandavshera, Manpai and by various organizations and scientists who described their status Bansinarayan in the north, and several dense broad leave oak in Himalaya (Table1). The total 17 ailments