Borneo's Punan communities race to save forest medicine before elders pass

In Sarawak's rainforest, the Punan people have always known which trees heal. A plant for fever. Another for wounds. A third for the kind of exhaustion that comes from living close to the land. This knowledge—passed down through generations as stories, rituals, and intimate familiarity with the forest—is now disappearing faster than the trees themselves.

When ecologist Keeren Sundara Rajoo and colleagues from Universiti Putra Malaysia spent time with Punan communities documenting their medicinal practices, they found something that looks simple on the surface but runs impossibly deep. Thirteen Indigenous guides led them through the forest, pointing out plants and weaving what Sundara Rajoo describes as a "spider web" of stories and knowledge—each plant connected to others, to seasons, to spiritual beliefs, to survival itself.

The research, published recently in Tropical Conservation Science, captures something urgent: when a medicinal plant vanishes, it's not just a species lost. It's an entire system of understanding—a community's heritage, its way of reading the world—that goes with it.

What's slipping away

The Punan live in longhouses that shelter multiple families, each with their own private rooms opening onto a shared central space where communal life happens. Just 40 kilometers away, another Indigenous group maintains its own distinct language, festivals, and belief systems. Yet across these communities, a pattern is repeating: younger people are turning away from traditional plant knowledge. Modern medicine feels more reliable. Western lifestyles feel more contemporary. The forest, meanwhile, keeps shrinking—cleared for logging, agriculture, and development.

Sundara Rajoo identified three interlocking problems. First, there's the obvious one: as the forest disappears, so do the plants. Second is the knowledge gap itself. The elders hold centuries of understanding in their minds, but few young Punan want to learn it. Third is the lack of any written record. Everything exists in oral tradition, which means when an elder passes, entire categories of knowledge can vanish in a single generation.

"Once the elders pass away, this knowledge may disappear with them," Sundara Rajoo said. The urgency isn't hypothetical. It's happening now.

What preservation actually looks like

The researchers aren't just documenting the problem—they're pointing toward solutions that respect how this knowledge actually works. Intergenerational knowledge sharing means creating real incentives and spaces for elders to teach younger Punan. Participatory documentation means working with communities to record their practices in ways that feel meaningful to them, not just extractive. In situ conservation—protecting the forests where these plants grow—is non-negotiable; you can't separate the medicine from the place it comes from. And cultivating medicinal plants in community gardens or botanical gardens provides backup if wild sources disappear.

What makes this work is that it's not preservation for preservation's sake. Sundara Rajoo frames it plainly: "This is not just about preserving plants. It's about preserving a way of life, a cultural identity, and a deep connection to the natural world."

The Punan have already lost so much forest. What remains now is a race against time—to document, protect, and pass on knowledge before the generation that holds it is gone.