Previous Recipient

Dr. Suneeti Jog earned her B.S. and M.S. (with distinction) at the Univ. of Mumbai, and her Ph.D. at Cleveland State Univ. She did a post-doc at the Univ. of Kansas, working for the Kansas Biological Survey. She has recently joined the staff of the Univ. of Texas, Tyler, as an assistant professor.

For her fellowship, Suneeti conducted a survey of the vascular plants of the Sahyadri Mountains in India’s Western Ghats, one of the world’s Biodiversity Hotspots designated by Conservation International. In this area, population pressure and economic development threaten to destroy much of the flora and fauna, and the forest is becoming increasingly fragmented. The local people use plants for a wide variety of purposes, yet there is little mention of this indigenous knowledge in the ethnobotanical literature.

To address these problems, Suneeti catalogued the local plants in the area around the villages of Amboli of and Tillari. In the Amboli Ghats, she idenitified 253 taxa of vascular plants belonging to 80 different plant families. Of these three (Elaeagnus conferta Roxb. Glochidion ellipticum Wight and Nothopegia castanaefolia (Roth) Ding Hou) are listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, two (Dalbergia latifolia and Myristica malabarica Lam.) are listed as vulnerable (IUCN), and five (Holigarna grahamii Kurz, Impatiens pulcherrima Dalzell, Myristica malabarica Lam., Pittosporum dasycaulon Miq. and Wendlandia thyrsoidea var. lawii (Hook.f.) Cowan) are listed as rare by the Botanical Survey of India. She and members of her team also conducted interviews with local healers to learn how local people, who have virtually no other source of medicines, use plants for medicinal purposes.

Due to problems obtaining permits, Dr. Jog was unable to conduct a floristic survey of the area around Tillari, but she did obtain information concerning local plant use from a village healer. It turned out that, in this the more remote of the two villages, the healer was very much conscious of the importance of limiting the harvest of useful plants to insure a steady supply. With the surrounding forests under threat, such local healers may have a significant role to play in future.

To read the entire report, click here.