Medicinal plants are achieving favour and have shown exponential growth throughout the globe due to fewer side effects in comparison to allopathic medications and innate pharmacological effects and being present naturally. Humans show intimate association with nature and always utilize the components of their surroundings to get medicines and foodstuffs. Around 50% of medications utilized by humans emanated from plant parts. For preliminary healthcare in developing countries, more than 80% of humans rely on herbal drugs. Worldwide, India has been the most extensive developer for herbs that have medicinal importance. So, there is a necessity to review this priceless herbal knowledge. This chapter will assist in furnishing the advantageous usage of herbs in various infections. It is a big challenge to conserve biodiversity because of the involvement of political difficulties and social demurs. There is a requirement to conserve these plant species and nurture their farming.
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Forests are the necessity to the lives of humans either in the hilly regions or land areas by providing oxygen and freshwater to drink and also capable of providing a diversity of beneficial products for medicinal and food purposes. The ancient classic significances connected with the diverse forestland kinds & the types of forestland outputs like remedial plants have achieved an enormous reputation in the current century. Similarly, the garnishing industries are rising day by day and utilizing natural components in their products, and these natural components involve medicinal plants extracts. The immediate increasing need for herbal drugs is tragically making serious pressure on many specified medicinal plants counting and causing over-harvesting of the trees. Due to which many of the species of herbal plants facing less rate of growth and have biased geographical coverage and these species of medicinal plants are additionally inclined to extinction (Kala et al., 2006). Conservation of biodiversity is a big challenging chore that involves political difficulties, scientific and social demurs. Accustomed to the immense species diversity & restricted aids available to embark on these conservation agendas, species hierarchization for their conservation, estimation of threat level and the almightily appropriate plan to be embraced become the primary pre-requisites. The International Union of Conservation of Nature(IUCN), the integration Union consists of both public and administrative community alliances, was founded. IUCN came up with the 'Red List of Threatened Species’, which equips the distribution of species and risk of extinction (Gowthami et al., 2021). Among the world, India has 2.4% of geographical area and having about 8% of global biodiversity (Gowthami et al., 2021). In 1998, the IUCN firstly publicized the red list of threatened plants, which records more than 8 thousand threatened species that are in danger of global and local destruction (Walter and Gillett 1998; Gowthami et al., 2021). According to the classification of IUCN, species are allotted a graded menace variety, which includes extinct(EX), extinction in the wild (EW), vulnerable (VU), critically endangered (CR), near threatened (NT), endangered (EN), least concern (LC) and data deficient (DD). Globally, IUCN has evaluated that almost 3 lakh species of vascular plants i.e. 13.49%, among which more than 40 thousand species are underneath threats. Numerous species of plants are becoming extinct i.e. (123 species are EX and around 37 species are in the EW category) and under threatened varieties i.e. around 3 thousand species are in the CR category, around 6 thousand species are in the EN category and approximately 7 thousand species are in VU category. Many explanations including population misplacement, reproducing power lost or capacity of seed germination, pollinator thrashing, overexploitation and destruction of habitat naturally or by humans and due to natural enemies like pests, pathogens are the causes of extinction or vulnerability of species of plants. In India, almost 18 thousand vascular plants constitute 11.53%, of which approximately 2 thousand of them are red listed species. From which, already extinct species are 8, around 432 species are under the threat (EN, VU and CR) also54 species almost are assorted underneath close to threatened (IUCN, 2020; Gowthami et al., 2021). Around the globe, for therapeutic purposes there are about 50 thousand to 80 thousand plants are utilized. Due to the heavy need for herbal derivatives, the herbal business in the world market is predicted to rise by American 120 billion dollars to American 7 trillion dollars through the year 2050. Now, the stake of India in the herbal world business is relatively inferior. The domestic employment of the natural drug-based industry is almost Rupees 80-90 billion. Therapeutic plants and their products are shipped from India have a value of about rupees 10 billion (Singh and Kumar, 2021).