PCA hike reveals man’s atrocity |31 July 2017
As part of its activities, the Plant Conservation Action (PCA) group organises nature walks every two months for its members and other interested conservation minded people. The aim is to explore and appreciate our natural environment, learn about the diversity of plants as well as identifying them. And of course such activity allows the participants to get to know each other better in a relaxed atmosphere. For the month of July, Sunday 23rd to be precise, we decided to check out the old ‘La Reserve’ trail.
Our group of eight was all set and ready, with high hopes of encountering some of the rarest plants in Seychelles. It is to be noted that La Reserve is an area with a large number of native species, and it has been proposed that it should be declared a nature reserve.
Natasha Pierre was our guide for the day as she had been doing a project in that forest as part of her undergraduate degree at the University of Seychelles. We also had Lindsay Chong-Seng (chairman of PCA), and everybody who knows him would realise that he would soon be relating environmental stories, which he did!
On a ridge some two hours later, Lindsay informed us that not far ahead, we will be seeing a Bwadou (Craterispermum microdon), one of the rarest plants in Seychelles and Critically Endangered according to IUCN threat categories. But to our dismay and shock, which turned to anger, the one and only Bwadou in that area had been cut down, and by the look of it, just recently, maybe the day before. We can only speculate that it had been cut down for medicinal use, given that it is one of the most sought after species by local herbalists. But this tree was mature, probably around 30 years old - a very rare species destroyed because of human beliefs or greed.
Bwadou is a plant belonging to the Rubiaceae family, and in Seychelles there are at least another 38 species in that family, including Bwakoulev, Bwatorti, Bwasitron, Bwadir, Kafemaron gran fey, Kafe, just to name a few.
What makes Bwadou extremely rare is the fact that it has a very low rate of propagation, and this is evident by the very low number of seedlings recorded anywhere on the islands. In the case of La Reserve NO seedlings were found. So it is a bit like overfishing – if you catch all the fish then there are none left to reproduce… resulting in no fish to catch for your supper. Or maybe it is like having a couple of pigs but killing them before they can produce any piglets because you want to eat pork NOW!
Because it is difficult to propagate Bwadou artificially, and it is not easy to grow plants in a garden (unlike some other endemic medicinal plants such as Bwazoliker and Bwa koulev), this means that Bwadou will become extinct because of overharvesting by certain unscrupulous herbalists. PCA is not against the use of native medicinal plants but they MUST be raised by the herbalists in a garden if possible or collected in a very careful and sustainable way – not by cutting down a large whole tree that has taken 30 or more years to grow and not if the species cannot produce seedlings in the forest by itself.
Contributed by Charles Morel and Katy Beaver
Plant Conservation Action group (PCA)
Disclaimer:
The speculations made in this article are those of the writers and not those of the Seychelles NATION newspaper.