Guardians of the Green: Conserving South Africa's medicinal heritage through the pepper-bark tree

Mail & Guardian

a day ago

The pepper-bark tree project incorporates collaboration with traditional healers, traders and harvesters (EWT Pepper-bark Project)
For thousands of years, Africa's landscapes have yielded plants with healing powers, sustaining not only
In South Africa, these
Historically, cultural rituals, protocols and practices and a profound cultural reverence for nature helped manage plant harvesting sustainably, explains
But as human populations have grown and rural populations migrated to urban areas, demand has increasingly outstripped the available sources of many plant species.
This, together with the erosion of harvesting controls and extensive habitat transformation through other human activities, has placed considerable pressure on numerous medicinal plant species.
South Africa alone
One of the most iconic medicinal plant species among them is the
(
Warburgia salutaris
), long revered in Southern Africa for its healing properties. It is used for everything from respiratory ailments to digestive issues.
In 2019, the EWT launched an integrated conservation project focused on this species in Limpopo, later expanding the scope of the project to include additional species and geographic locations in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and Gauteng.
Native to montane forests, thickets and woodlands in these regions, the pepper-bark tree has also been found in Mozambique and eSwatini but is believed to be extinct in the wild in Zimbabwe.
The
Native to montane forests, thickets and woodlands in these regions, the pepper-bark tree has also been found in Mozambique and eSwatini but is believed to be extinct in the wild in Zimbabwe.
Its bark, roots and rootbark have historically been in high demand for traditional medicine across Southern Africa. Encouragingly, more recently, many of its therapeutic properties have been corroborated scientifically.
'From a conservation perspective, its leaves were found to contain the same phytochemicals as the other plant parts that were traditionally used for medicine,' Botha says, noting that the substitution of leaves for bark, roots or rootbark significantly reduces harvesting impact.
'We're starting to see healers and others, also in the local markets, also start using the leaves because people are finding that they are as effective in medicinal treatments as the bark and the root in many cases … One species will be used for very diverse, different uses in many cases and the pepper-bark isn't an exception.'
Over the past three decades, national and regional conservationists have partnered with traditional healers and private sector players to mitigate over-harvesting through cultivation.
More than 80 000 seedlings have already been distributed to traditional practitioners and community members.
The Pepper-bark Tree Project incorporates collaboration with traditional healers, traders and harvesters to increase the diversity of species that are being cultivated in many areas.
'In addition, we are implementing strategies alongside private and communal landowners to protect and restore habitats. A seed viability assessment has also been conducted as the species germination rates in some populations are low,' Botha says.
To secure habitat for the pepper-bark tree and other species, the EWT has collaborated with the Limpopo department of development and tourism and private landowners to secure formal protection of land through South Africa's Biodiversity Stewardship Programme.
More than 70 hectares of invasive vegetation has been cleared from pepper-bark tree habitats, an effort that has triggered the reappearance of tree seedlings in areas where they had long been absent.
'We are also engaging with several communities in areas where pepper-bark trees and other medicinal species are being intensively harvested to explore opportunities to support them to improve harvesting controls and remind people of the importance of their biocultural heritage.'
Harvesters frequently come from outside the area 'and, where possible, we invite them to join this national effort' to improve the sustainability of medicinal plants for now and for future generations.
The EWT has engaged with about 300 traditional healers from more than 20 communities in Limpopo to identify strategies to reduce threats to wild medicinal plant populations.
Training and education are vital pillars of the programme. In February and March, the programme collaborated with the South African National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi) to develop and implement training on the cultivation of medicinal plants.
'This training will gradually be implemented across all our project areas to support cultivation and lay the foundation for scaling up these production efforts over time.'
Following visits to Sanbi's
The training incorporated demonstrations of various cultivation and propagation techniques, discussions on legislation and the permitting system and engagement on challenges people are facing in accessing medicinal plants.
Each participant received seedlings and a starter pack to begin growing medicinal plants immediately.
'Our team follows up with the groups regularly to monitor the survival of plants and any challenges that they may be experiencing. We are also in the process of sourcing additional species for them to start growing,' Botha says.
She notes how, in many rural communities, traditional harvesting was once guided by strict controls to ensure wild plant populations thrived. While some of these have faded under modern pressures, the knowledge and values remain.
'There's also an open commons challenge. You'll find that people will go to a site that is open access and then they know that, if they don't harvest those plants, then somebody else is going to come in and do it.'
Traditional healers themselves still try to follow very strict harvesting protocols and 'there are a lot of cultural protocols associated with harvesting that are very, very important'.
'There are some types of plants that need to be collected from the wild but a lot of the healers whom I knew were growing plants before we started, whether it was in this project or projects I've worked on in Mpumalanga or other areas.'
Many medicinal plant species are slow-growing or 'sometimes the seed may be recalcitrant' and it can be difficult to actually propagate them.
'The work that we're doing is helping the healers and other stakeholders to strengthen their cultivation skills and then also to provide the diversity of species that they actually need.'
This is because most healers use a very diverse suite of species, Botha says.
'It's really important that they're able to access them legally without having to worry about being arrested if someone is caught with a bag of plants.'
Hope lies in collaboration and the pepper-bark project is proof that the EWT is not only conserving a species but also reinforcing community agency, cultural heritage and sustainable livelihoods.
Crucially, this conservation initiative is not about imposing modern conservation ideas — it's about reawakening ancient knowledge and co-creating solutions.
'Traditional healers are as passionate about sustainability as we are and in fact, I found that most community groups are,' Botha says.
'It's a myth that people don't actually care about the environment because they come from a different background, whether it's socio-economic or cultural. The healers are as enthusiastic about the work we do as we are.'
This deep ancestral and spiritual connection with nature runs through most traditional healers' views of the environment.
'People, generally, in our modern society are losing our connections to nature because of technological advancements etcetera. More of us are more fixated on our phones or the latest gadget than we are concerned about walking in nature and experiencing nature in the way that perhaps was more easily accessible to people in the past.'
One part of the programme's mission is to help people reconnect with nature, whether through visiting a botanical garden or walking in a local nature reserve.
'That deep spiritual connection that people have with the land, in this case particularly the healers … it's a case of reconnecting with nature and rekindling those relationships so that we in that way are able to foster more care for the planet.'
It's incredibly inspiring work, she says. 'I don't think there's been a day where I haven't learned something new or a day where I haven't met amazing people or reconnected with amazing people from all walks of life.'
Plants have been valued for their curative powers for millennia, not only as traditional medicines, but also in conventional medicine.
'Achieving our goals to reduce threats to species of conservation concern at scale will clearly take time and collaborative efforts across partner organisations and sectors to enable us to synergise our resources and share the knowledge, understanding and collective effort that is required to avert extinctions.'
Critically, the needs of the poorest consumers, who depend on these plants for their healthcare, must be at the forefront.
'Many simply cannot afford more expensive alternatives and it is vital that we co-develop strategies to cultivate plants that are both affordable and aligned to the cultural protocols associated with the use of these medicines, so that their therapeutic values are retained or even, in some instances, restored.'
People from all walks of life, including traditional healers, don't want to see the loss of their own natural resources. 'They value them in most cases for the intrinsic value of the plant as well as the fact that it is part of their livelihoods,' Botha adds.