Biodiversity and Health

The United Nations declared 2010 the "International Year of Biodiversity." We naturally are very gratified that this subject has been given such prominence, since the conservation of rainforest biodiversity has been a primary goal of the Amazon Conservation Team since our founding 15 years ago.

One of the most unique, creative, and passionate experts on the subject of biodiversity is physician Christopher Herndon, a longtime friend and ACT colleague. Chris received his medical training at Yale and Harvard and from the shamans of the northern Amazon – the latter he is quick to cite as particularly formative to his development as a physician and his understanding of healing.

Chris recently teamed up with another leading spokesman for conservation – journalist Rhett Butler, who publishes the extraordinary website www.mongabay.com – to pen a commentary for the influential journal Biotropica. Read the full article here. I think you will find it both insightful and informative.

Mark J. Plotkin, Ph.D.  

President, Amazon Conservation Team

The Healthcare Debate's Missing Ingredient

Healthcare impacts much more than just national policy and economics.  A major shortcoming of the ongoing debate is that it largely overlooks the whole concept of prevention: a better life and better living by addressing root causes. 


A fundamental pillar of Shamanic healthcare in the Amazon is spirituality, a belief that deep healing happens in the invisible realm, or otherwise happens in the realm of the placebo – that is, between your ears.

Shamans are masters of both of these “alternative” types of healing, and logic dictates that the global conservation agenda should focus more on the need to preserve their specialized knowledge and the plants they employ, directly demonstrating why people in our industrialized and often stressed-out society have a stake in these far-off cultures and forests.  Why should we care about the Amazon?  Why should people concern themselves with the fate of the Shamans?  Whether you’re worried about your own health, that of your children, or that of the planet, it’s all tied together.

The urgent global need for the preservation of forests, the preservation of biodiversity and the preservation of indigenous forms of healing and diagnosis should be merged into the broader healthcare discussion because we have a personal wellness stake in each of these issues.  The Shamans I have come to know see no personal health without the health of their environment—in the face of increasing resource depletion and climate change, I believe this is an understanding to which we are all now being led.