IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC), Medicinal Plant Specialist Group

This publication provides for the first time factual information on the status of medicinal plants in Europe. This assessment includes 400 vascular plants from ninety families, and the good news is it shows that only 2.4% of medicinal plants are threatened. The collection of plants from the wild was identified as the prime threat, and impacts from agriculture were identified as another important threat. 

One of the major impediments to the advancement of medicinal plant conservation is the difficulty of accessing and analysing the relevant literature. Books and papers on medicinal plants count by the tens of thousands worlwide.

Books and papers on medicinal plants number tens of thousands worldwide. The bulk of them relate to pharmacology and medicinal properties or to classical ethnobotanical research. Regrettably, information on distribution, life history, biology, population status, levels of extraction and trade, or resource management of the taxa is scarce. Information urgently needed for setting plant conservation priorities is rare and scattered.