This paper uses an indices method based on participant ranking of species to quantify use-values of Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) and the socio-economic factors that influence these values for people living around the Pendjari Biosphere Reserve in Benin. There were 76 species identified that had a high index value to people. The 10 most valued species were Parkia biglobosa, Adansonia digitata, Vitellaria paradoxa, Tamarindus indica, Lannea microcarpa, Vitex doniana, Hibiscus asper, Melochia corchorifolia, Khaya senegalensis, and Diospyros mespiliformis. Species values were influenced by the vegetative form of the species as well as by the gender of a participant and his/her affiliation to the ethnic group. The study also illustrates that women had a preference for NTFP species with high commercial and nutritional values, while men preferred plants that provide construction material and medicine. Moreover, the ethnic group that historically had more contact and interaction with the vegetation valued NTFPs more than any other group. The difference in value attributed to species by people was also driven by the vertical transmission of ethnobotanical knowledge in the study area. For long-term biodiversity conservation, it will be useful to involve the needs of all of the local communities in the design of a management plan and focus attention on the most important species.

The colonial era witnessed a fevered quest for exotic medicinal plants by European physicians and scientists. This essay explores the geographical principles that oriented the search towards the lands and peoples of the humid tropics. Believing that God had planted botanical cures for diseases in their places of origin, medicinal plant collectors concentrated their efforts in the pestilential equatorial latitudes. Although many subscribed to the ancient Doctrine of Signatures, colonial bioprospectors discovered early that indigenous and diasporic peoples represented storehouses of plant knowledge. Assuming that native knowhow constituted more instinct than intelligence, Europeans employed coercion, bribes, torture, and promises of freedom to extract their ethnomedical secrets. In the case of especially lucrative healing plants, imperial and colonial entities conspired to pilfer and naturalize endemic species in their distant colonies. In response to this legacy of inappropriate exploitation of native peoples and tropical plants during the colonial era, most present day bioprospectors follow established codes of ethnobotanical ethics.