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There are about 70 million tribal belonging to over 550 communities. They are in possession of a treasure of rich traditional knowledge system associated with the conservation and the use of wild flora, fauna and other natural resources. The inroads of modernization are presently posing imminent danger to this rich and varied knowledge system of these communities, and it is likely that it may be completely lost to the humanity for all time to come. Recognizing this danger, Prof M.S Swaminathan, the then Director General of Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) mooted the idea of starting a research programme to document the knowledge system of the tribal communities of India in 1976. Government of India finally launched an 'All Indian Coordinated Research Project on Ethnobiology' (AICRPE) under the Man and the Biospere (MAB) Programme in 1982. The overall objective of AICRPE was to make an indepth study and the analysis of the multidimensional perspectives of the life, culture, tradition and knowledge system of the tribal communities of India. Initially the project was under the Department of Science and Technology, but later transerred to the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Govt. of India. The author, then a senior scientist at Regional Research Laboratory (RRL), Jamuu ( a constituent laboratory of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research - CSIR), was appointed as the chief coordinator of the massive programme. It was operated at 27 centers in the country and about 600 scientists drawn from botany, zoology, sociology,anthropology, ayurveda, chemistry and pharmocology worked in this project that lasted for 16 years (1982 - 1998). AICPRE project dovumented the use of over 10,000 wild plants used by tribals for meeting a variety of their requirements.
