The Main Objective of Sacred Land Initiatives

The main focus of our plans for the future is to increase awareness about indigenous medicinal and aromatic plants and the need for conservation and sustainable use in traditional medicine.

Generally, medicinal plants are under thread due to overharvesting, and with the worldwide new interest in Tibetan and Aryurvedic medicines and cosmetics this situation is fastly deteriorating.

In Nepal, poor villagers often harvest medical plants growing at high altitudes, in vulnerable mountain ecosystems without any awareness of the long-term consequences. The medicinal part of many plants is the roots and unskilled collection of medicinal and aromatic plants can endanger the viability of local plant populations. Wholesale collection leaves very few plants to set seed.

Hence many of the plants growing in the Himalayas are under threat and some vital ingredients for traditional herbal medicines are now unavailable.

Therefore it is important to encourage the establishment of high altitude medical herb garden and plantation for the sustainable use and conservation of medicinal plants indigenous to the Solu Khumbu of Nepal.