Background In Palestine, medicinal plants have continued to
play a vital role in fulfilling animal healthcare needs of rural communities.
However, these valuable resources are being depleted mainly due to
over-harvesting, inappropriate agricultural practices (e.g., over use of
herbicides), agricultural expansion, and over-grazing. Therefore, immediate
action is required to conserve these resources and document the associated
knowledge. The purpose of this study was, thus, to document and analyze
information associated with medicinal plants that are used in managing animal
health problems in the West Bank, Palestine.
Materials and methods Ethnobotanical data were collected from Apr 2012, to Feb
2014 mainly using semi-structured interviews with informants sampled using
purposive sampling technique and through field observations.
Results The study revealed the use of 138 medicinal plant species in the West
Bank for the treatment of several livestock diseases, of these 75 species
representing 70 genera and 33 families were reported by 3 independent
informants or above. Classification of the ethnoveterinary plant species cited
by three informants or above used in a rank-order priority (ROP) based on their
claimed relative healing potential has demonstrated that the following are the
plants with the highest efficacy: Camellia sinenses, Teucrium capitatum, and Salvia
fruticosa with ROPs of 97.1, 93.2, and 91.4, respectively, are used primarily
to relieve gastric disorders. Gastrointestinal disorders is the disease group
in the study area that scored the highest Informant consensus factor (ICF)
value (0.90), followed by urinary, and reproductive disorders (0.89). Conclusion
Our study provided evidence that medicinal plants are still playing important
role in the management of livestock diseases, and showed that ethnoveterinary
plants used in animal health care in Palestine have been also recorded in human
Traditional Arabic Palestinian Herbal Medicine (TAPHM), and demonstrated a
strong link between human and veterinary medical practices. This survey has
identified a number of important medicinal plants used by the Palestinian farmers
of the West Bank area for the treatment of various animal ailments. It provides
a baseline for future phytochemical and pharmacological investigations into the
beneficial medicinal properties of such plants.