Abstract
BackgroundMany ecosystem services provided by forests are important for the livelihoods of indigenous people. Sacred forests are used for traditional practices by the ethnic minorities in northern Thailand and they protect these forests that are important for their culture and daily life. Swidden fallow fields are a dominant feature of the agricultural farming landscapes in the region. In this study we evaluate and compare the importance of swidden fallow fields and sacred forests as providers of medicinal plants among the Karen and Lawa ethnic minorities in northern Thailand.MethodsWe made plant inventories in swidden fallow fields of three different ages (1–2, 3–4, 5–6 years old) and in sacred forests around two villages using a replicated stratified design of vegetation plots. Subsequently we interviewed the villagers, using semi-structured questionnaires, to assess the medicinal use of the species encountered in the vegetation survey.ResultsWe registered a total of 365 species in 244 genera and 82 families. Of these 72(19%) species in 60(24%) genera and 32(39%) families had medicinal uses. Although the sacred forest overall housed more species than the swidden fallow fields, about equal numbers of medicinal plants were derived from the forest and the fallows. This in turn means that a higher proportion (48% and 34%) of the species in the relatively species poor fallows were used for medicinal purposes than the proportion of medicinal plants from the sacred forest which accounted for 17–22%. Of the 32 medicinal plant families Euphorbiaceae and Lauraceae had most used species in the Karen and Lawa villages respectively.ConclusionSacred forest are important for providing medicinal plant species to the Karen and Lawa communities in northern Thailand, but the swidden fallows around the villages are equally important in terms of absolute numbers of medicinal plant species, and more important if counted as proportion of the total number of species in a habitat. This points to the importance of secondary vegetation as provider of medicinal plants around rural villages as seen elsewhere in the tropics.
Highlights
Many ecosystem services provided by forests are important for the livelihoods of indigenous people
As in many tropical regions, shifting cultivation is a major land use system in northern Thailand and it is a major driver of deforestation in the upland areas [2,3]
About 5% of the original forested areas in northern Thailand are under shifting cultivation [3] and fallow forests cover large parts of the highlands of this region [4]
Summary
Many ecosystem services provided by forests are important for the livelihoods of indigenous people. In this study we evaluate and compare the importance of swidden fallow fields and sacred forests as providers of medicinal plants among the Karen and Lawa ethnic minorities in northern Thailand. About 5% of the original forested areas in northern Thailand are under shifting cultivation [3] and fallow forests cover large parts of the highlands of this region [4]. Under this land use system fields are abandoned after cultivation and are left without intensive use for. The shifting cultivators still obtain many of the plants that they need for their livelihood from these fallow fields and regenerating forests [6]
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