WWF - Pakistan realised, after its extensive interaction with the local communities in the field, that local people have extensive knowledge of the plants growing around them but no agency, either in the government or the private sector has ever used it for the conservation of plant resources in the region.

In the wake of an ethnobotany workshop organised by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Nepal in 1995, WWF - Pakistan's Conservation Division, in collaboration with National Agricultural Research Council (NARC) and ICIMOD, organised a National Workshop on Ethnobotany in Islamabad which highlighted the significance of ethnobotany in conserving plant resources. Later WWF - Pakistan was awarded another project in 1997 on the application of ethnobotany to the conservation and improved management of Ayubia National Park. The major objectives of this project are the promotion of sustainable and wise use of plant resources and capacity building of people to make them realise the significance of medicinal plants and their sustainable use.

The activities of the project not only motivated the local community towards the protection of plant resources but mobilised academic institutions to depute students for documenting their research in their postgraduate thesis on ethnobotany. The first project on ethnobotany, though it ended in 2000, was soon replaced by a much larger one that embraces national ethnobotany resources. It is because of the work of WWF - Pakistan on ethnobotany that indigenous knowledge is being regarded as significantly helpful in conserving natural resources, with the result that almost all the projects in Pakistan that aim to conserve natural resources now include ethnobotany in their approaches. Some universities have agreed to include ethnobotany in their curriculum, which is a big change in the policy of academic institutions.

Over the past year the Ethnobotany Project established resource centres at Karachi and Balochistan Universities, trained 128 activists in nursery raising of fast growing tree species, and established medicinal plant nurseries as well as nurseries of multipurpose tree species. It promoted the use of fuel efficient stoves with the help of the Building and Construction Improvement Programme. Ethnobotany clubs were established in schools. In Swat, eleven medicinal plant nurseries were established.
Three short term and two long term grants were awarded to MPhil and PhD students, and a research study was carried out on the composition of medicinal plants in fodder given to livestock in Ayubia National Park. An international workshop on ‘Conservation and Sustainable Uses of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants in Pakistan’ was conducted.