Red Listed medicinal plants of South Africa: Status,trends, and assessment challenges

In 2009, South Africa completed the IUCN Red List assessments of 20,456 indigenous vascular plant taxa. During that process, medicinal plant species (especially those sold in informal muthi markets) were identified so that potential extinction risks posed to these species could be assessed. The present study examines and analyses the recently documented threat statuses of South African ethnomedicinal taxa, including the number of species used, revealing family richness and the degree of endemism, and calculates the Red List Index (RLI) of species survival to measure the relative degree of threat to medicinal species. Approximately 2062 indigenous plant species (10% of the total flora) have been recorded as being used for traditional medicine in South Africa, of which it has been determined that 82 species (0.4% of the total national flora) are threatened with extinction at a national level in the short and medium terms and a further 100 species are of conservation concern (including two species already extinct in the wild). Thirty-two percent of the taxa have been recorded in traditional medicine markets in the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and Limpopo. The study also reflects on the challenges associated with Red List evaluations of medicinal species, many of which, based on market reports, are extracted at a seemingly unsustainable rate. In contrast to the majority of species enumerated in the Red List of South African plants, medicinal taxa are often widespread, with large extents of occurrence. Accordingly, the population decline criteria have necessarily been applied to assess threats to their existence, even though accurate figures for numbers of remaining individuals, areas of occupancy, quantities harvested, and regeneration times are often found lacking. Factors leading to susceptibility of plant species to extinction as a result of harvesting pressure are discussed. The current findings reveal a need for greater emphasis on focussed population level research on prioritised medicinal plant species.