Status of medicinal and aromatic plants in - Inia

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WORKING GROUP ON MEDICINAL AND AROMATIC PLANTS: FIRST MEETING
Legal protection, conservation and cultivation of medicinal and aromatic plants
in Croatia
Zlatko Šatović
Department of Seed Science and Technology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb, Zagreb,
Croatia
Legal protection of medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) and their natural habitats
The Law on Nature Protection (Official Gazette 'Narodne novine' Nos. 30/94 and 72/94) is the
basic Croatian law regulating the issues of biological and landscape diversity preservation.
The principal in situ biological conservation method is the establishment of protected natural
areas. Pursuant to the Law on Nature Protection, approximately 7.5% of the Croatian State
territory is protected in this manner. This Law establishes 8 spatial protection categories
(national park, park of nature, strict reserve, special reserve, monument of nature, protected
landscape, park-forest and park architecture monument). All protected areas are subject to
very strict biodiversity protection measures (Radović 2000).
Apart from the protected areas, certain plant species (44) are also protected pursuant to
the Law on Nature Protection (Box 1). Five out of these 44 species (in bold) are traditionally
used in folk medicine although it is not likely that overexploitation for medical purposes is
the main reason of their rareness. However, overexploitation of related species such as
Gentiana lutea L. and Paeonia officinalis L. has led to genetic erosion of these plants in some
environments.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection and Physical Planning is currently working on
a Rule Book that would regulate protection of all plant species on the Red List in Croatia.
The Red Data Book of Plant Taxa of the Republic of Croatia (Šugar 1994) provided a list of 401
nationally threatened plant species classified as extinct (2), possibly extinct (2), endangered
(87), vulnerable (85), rare (214), and indeterminate (11). According to the Red Data Book there
are 17 plant species that are endangered, inter alia, due to their collecting as medicinal plants
(Box 2). Nevertheless, other factors such as habitat loss or modification (drainage works,
dam building, clearing of land for agriculture, road construction, mining) as well as small
population size and collecting for decorative purposes seems to be more important in most
cases.
According to Article 36 of the Law on Nature Protection the Ministry's approval should be
obtained for gathering plants (and their parts) that are not protected by the present or other
laws if this is done for processing, commercial or trading purposes. The Rule Book on
Collecting Plants in the Wild which regulates the gathering, trade and export of particular wild
medicinal plants is still in preparation. Upon request, the Ministry issues permissions and
sets quotas for the gathering of particular wild medicinal plants. In 1991, nine companies
have obtained permissions for wild-collecting of 87 plant species (Box 3) and a total quota for
the quantities to be wild-collected was set to 108 886.50 kg. The quantities were set
according to the state of the natural population for the different species on the basis of
research made by specialists from the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Pharmacy and
Biotechnology. Data on actual quantities gathered upon permissions are not complete.
In the framework of the project "Biological database and geographic information system"
(main researcher: Toni Nikolić, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb), the Flora Croatica:
Index Florae Croaticae and Flora Croatica Database have been developed. They are
continuously updated, supplemented and modified regarding the qualitative structure of
Croatian flora (Nikolić 1994, 1997, 2000). However, the survey of the status of MAP natural
resources still has to be done.