Dr. Maria Fadiman is an ethnobotanist: she studies how people use plants. “Looking at plant
conservation without including people is a fantasy,” she says. “The focus of my work is
finding a balance where people use resources in a
sustainable way.”
It struck Fadiman early on that this was what she
wanted to do. “I was born with a passion for
conservation and a fascination with indigenous
cultures,” she explains. “Ethnobotany lets me bring
it all together. On my first trip to the rain forest, I
met a woman who was in terrible pain because the
people in her village weren’t able to remember
which plant would cure her. I saw that traditional
plant knowledge was being lost, and at that
moment I knew conserving this kind of knowledge
was what I wanted to do with my life.”
Visiting the Ecuadorian rainforest, Dr. Fadiman was amazed at the variety of plants. “It looked
like one big, green mish-mash,” she says. “But the people who lived there were able to pick out
the right plants for medicine and could distinguish not only the plants that were safe to eat,
but also the right part of each plant.”
The problem often is that such knowledge is stored only in local people’s minds and it is
passed down from generation to generation. Fadiman managed to persuade inhabitants of
the Ecuadorian rainforest to let her record the information in written form. “They are excited
by this idea because suddenly their knowledge is valued.”
But conservation doesn’t just mean protecting indigenous plants. If bringing in non-native
plants, including cash crops like coffee, is beneficial to people and the environment, then
that’s fine too. In the Galapagos Islands, where overfishing was a real problem,
environmentalists like Fadiman succeeded in getting local people to think about alternatives,
like growing coffee.
By forming close relationships with local people and joining in with their way of life, Fadiman
has inspired her own students at Florida Atlantic University. Students who couldn’t easily
absorb facts and statistics said they were able to engage much more easily with the subject
when they heard her stories of going to the river to brush her teeth or sitting around a cooking
fire.
How is Maria Fadiman’s interest in plants different from that of a traditional botanist?
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
2 Where does she work?
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
3 What two uses of plants are mentioned in the article?
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Use the text to take notes. What does the article say about:
The way Fadiman collects
knowledge from local people
The way that local people often
pass on their knowledge?
Use the words from the grammar box to complete
the text.
1 In the past, people could ____________________
(distinguish) plants more than they can now.
2 Recently, a group of children who were asked
where
cotton
came
from
weren’t
able
____________________ (say) whether it was from an
animal or a plant.
3 People were able ____________________ (use) this
knowledge to find food and medicines.
4 They also managed ____________________ (work)
out which plants were good for certain purposes.
5
But
they
didn’t
always
succeed
____________________ (pass) this knowledge on to the
next generation.
6 So people couldn’t ____________________ (keep)
some of this knowledge from being lost.
The way Fadiman passes on
her knowledge to her students?