Medicinal Plants Conservation Project

Welcome

St. Katherine is one of world's most amazing areas, not only for its natural landscape, but also for its medicinal plant diversity that is attracting national and global interest.

The Bedouin communities who live in the St. Katherine Protectorate have developed an extensive knowledge over the past milennia of the various ways in which medicinal plant species can be used. This in turn has formed a part of their integral economic value while living in a delicately balanced environment.

The Medicinal Plants Conservation Project (MPCP) is a national project that aims at examining and eliminating the root causes to the loss in biodiversity and addressing the threats to the conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plants in Egypt through a number of interventions, while at the same time empowering the Bedouin community to use and manage its resources in a sustainable manner.

Medicinal Plants

^{With its high mountains and deep wadis in the southern Sinai Peninsula and its relatively unexplored desert ecosystem of flora and fauna, the St. Katherine Protectorate is a truly amazing, unique and important area.}

The global significance of species found in the St. Katherine’s Protectorate is not only related to the uniqueness of flora and habitat, but also due to use value. At least 47% have medicinal, aromatic, cosmetic or culinary uses, in addition to being used as fodder or fuel.

While previous plant inventories recorded 529 plant species within the boundaries of the protectorate, only 316 plant species were recorded, of which 33 species are endemic. Additionally, the disappearance of, or at least the difficulty to locate, 213 species confirms that the medicinal plants face a growing danger of damage and in the worst case extinction, which in turn will effect the global plant biodiversity.

To achieve the objectives of the project a pamphlet guide has been released illustrating the most economically beneficial medicinal plants of the region. The pamphlet serves as a simplified guide for those interested in the cultivation of medicinal plants.

You can browse our database and find out more about the valuable and various plants of St. Katherine by using the search categories and typing in plant name or their use value.