Conservation Status of Amazonian Entheogenic Plants

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This article is part of the Yaogará Ark, a living archive of Amazonian teacher plants.

Abstract

The conservation status of Amazonian entheogenic plants—species integral to Indigenous healing, ritual, and cultural identity—is a pressing concern given rising anthropogenic threats, habitat loss, and global demand. This research brief synthesizes current IUCN and peer-reviewed conservation data for key Amazonian entheogenic taxa, notably Banisteriopsis caapi (ayahuasca vine), Psychotria viridis, and Brugmansia spp., emphasizing patterns of threat, recent ecological trends, and Indigenous-led stewardship. Sustainable management of these species is inextricably bound to the biocultural rights of forest communities, whose traditional stewardship increasingly offers a model for interwoven ecological and cultural preservation (Frontiers in Conservation Science 2025, doi:10.3389/fcosc.2025.1569528; Science 2024).

Botanical Classification

Key Amazonian entheogenic plants include:

  • Banisteriopsis caapi (Malpighiaceae): A perennial liana native to lowland Amazonia, primary botanical source of β-carboline alkaloids (harmine, harmaline). Foundational in ayahuasca decoctions and often cultivated in Indigenous gardens for ritual use.

  • Psychotria viridis (Rubiaceae): A perennial shrub across western Amazonia and adjacent regions, principal source of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) when prepared in conjunction with MAO-inhibiting plants; co-ingredient in ayahuasca.

  • Brugmansia spp. (Solanaceae): Trees and shrubs (often called “floripondio” or “toe”) distributed in Andean and Amazonian montane and foothill ecotones; source of tropane alkaloids (notably scopolamine and atropine) with powerful psychoactive and toxic properties.

While none of these species are currently designated “Endangered” on the IUCN Red List as of late 2025, important regional assessment gaps and shifting local pressures merit caution (Frontiers in Conservation Science 2025, doi:10.3389/fcosc.2025.1569528).

Geographical Distribution and Habitat

  • Banisteriopsis caapi: Occurs across the lowland Amazon Basin, especially in humid tropical forests and along riverine corridors where secondary growth and forest margins provide suitable climbing substrates. It is widely cultivated in Indigenous and riverine community gardens and often persists in semi-managed forest mosaics. In areas of increased ceremonial use, the vine is propagated vegetatively in clustered plots, which can result in locally high densities but does not substitute for broader landscape connectivity (Frontiers in Conservation Science 2025, doi:10.3389/fcosc.2025.1569528).

  • Psychotria viridis: Distributed in western and southwestern Amazonia, including upland terra firme forests, seasonally inundated margins, and anthropogenic forest edges where partial shade supports growth. As an understory shrub, it is sensitive to microclimate shifts from deforestation and fragmentation; community-managed gardens serve as reservoirs of lineage-specific cultivars and selections used in ritual contexts (Science 2024).

  • Brugmansia spp.: Native to Andean regions and widely cultivated and naturalized in Andean–Amazonian foothills, cloud forest edges, and human-disturbed habitats such as village perimeters and chacras. Their presence near settlements reflects cultural selection and horticultural care by ritual specialists, but their wild status is often ambiguous due to long-term association with people and frequent vegetative propagation.

Across these taxa, distribution patterns reflect a blend of wild occurrence, semi-domestication, and intensive cultivation by Indigenous and local communities. Habitat stability is therefore tied to the integrity of Indigenous territories and co-managed landscapes: as road expansion, extractive activities, and agricultural frontiers advance, microhabitats that support these plants—riparian zones, forest edges, and secondary growth—are often among the first to be altered or lost (Amazon Watch 2025; WI-FRI 2025).

Ethnobotanical Context

Indigenous and regional Amazonian societies have used ayahuasca and related teacher plants for millennia in ritual healing, communal decision-making, and spiritual education. For example, the Shuar, Shipibo-Konibo, Huni Kuin, and numerous other groups employ Banisteriopsis caapi and admixtures for communication with spiritual entities, diagnosis of illness, and maintenance of social order (Science 2024; EDF/Vital Signs 2023). Traditional cultivation occurs in fenced gardens (chacras)—effectively curated ethnobotanical reserves—distinguishing these practices from extractive wild harvesting. However, increasing outside demand, tourism (ayahuasca retreats), and global trade risk decoupling these plants from their customary land bases and governance structures (Frontiers in Conservation Science 2025, doi:10.3389/fcosc.2025.1569528).

Beyond their pharmacological effects, these plants function as mediators of knowledge, health, and collective identity. Naming practices, lineage-based selection, and ritual singing encode plant–human relationships and are essential components of Amazonian cosmopolitical systems, where plants are treated as agentive teachers and kin rather than as raw materials (Animism in Rainforest and Tundra, Brightman et al. 2012; Science 2024). Within this framework, stewardship is entangled with ceremonial obligations, and the vitality of the plants is seen as reciprocally linked to the moral and social well-being of the community.

Knowledge transmission occurs through apprenticeship, family instruction, and ritual performance. In recent decades, transmission has adapted to include intercultural exchanges, written codifications, and digital archives due to expanding outside interest (Science 2024). Indigenous communities emphasize the need for control over how this knowledge is shared, asserting biocultural rights enabling them to manage plant resources and ceremonial traditions with autonomy (EDF/Vital Signs 2023; Chacruna Institute 2025).

Phytochemistry and Pharmacology

  • Banisteriopsis caapi: Contains β-carboline alkaloids (harmine, harmaline, and related compounds) that act as reversible monoamine oxidase A inhibitors (RIMAs), essential for enabling oral DMT activity from companion plants such as Psychotria viridis. These alkaloids also have intrinsic psychoactive profiles that contribute to the experience and to the brew’s somatic and neurocognitive effects.

  • Psychotria viridis: Contains N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a potent tryptamine hallucinogen. In the context of ayahuasca decoctions, DMT becomes orally active in the presence of β-carbolines provided by Banisteriopsis caapi.

  • Brugmansia spp.: Contain tropane alkaloids such as scopolamine and atropine, which can produce intense psychoactive effects but carry substantial toxicity risks. In Amazonian and Andean contexts, preparations are traditionally reserved for highly trained specialists and are used with extreme caution due to narrow therapeutic margins.

Beyond chemistry, the plants’ symbolic roles are integral to their efficacy. Ritual semiotics—such as the singing of icaros, plant dieting regimens, and cosmological narratives—mediate the phenomenology of healing and vision, shaping the perceived agency of the plants and anchoring them as “teachers” within Indigenous ontologies (Animism in Rainforest and Tundra, Brightman et al. 2012; Science 2024).

Traditional Preparation and Use

Ayahuasca is brewed by combining Banisteriopsis caapi with Psychotria viridis and, less commonly, with additional admixture plants. Preparation techniques vary by lineage but typically involve cleaning and macerating vine sections, layering with fresh or dried leaf material, and long-duration boiling with careful attention to water sources, firewood selection, and ritual framing. Each group preserves distinctive lineages and ritual forms—in Shipibo contexts, for example, the singing of icaros (healing songs) is central, while Huni Kuin ceremonial practice emphasizes cosmological exchanges in group ceremonies.

The brew’s preparation and serving are overseen by experienced specialists who regulate dosage, set and setting, and participant readiness. Fasting, dietary restrictions, and abstentions often precede ceremonies, reflecting both pharmacological prudence and the ethical tenor of reciprocity with plant persons. The continuity of these practices relies on local cultivation of plant stocks: vine cuttings are often propagated in specific garden plots, and selections of Psychotria viridis are maintained for their perceived potency, “voice,” or healing profile.

Other entheogenic taxa such as Brugmansia are employed cautiously in rites of passage or divination, typically supervised by highly trained specialists due to their toxic risks. Preparation methods are tightly controlled and vary by lineage, ensuring both efficacy and safety (Science 2024). Across cultural settings, ceremonial responsibilities include tending the living plants, protecting the orchards and forest patches where they grow, and observing ritual exchanges that reaffirm relationships with non-human beings.

Conservation and Ethical Considerations

While no key Amazonian entheogen currently registers as globally “Threatened” by IUCN, the lack of long-term population monitoring and vulnerability to localized overharvesting are significant gaps (Frontiers in Conservation Science 2025, doi:10.3389/fcosc.2025.1569528; WI-FRI 2025). Specific threats include:

  • Deforestation and habitat loss from industrial agriculture, infrastructure, and extractive industries (Amazon Watch 2025).

  • Overharvesting driven by commercial ayahuasca tourism, global psychonautic demand, and removal from local gardens (Frontiers in Conservation Science 2025, doi:10.3389/fcosc.2025.1569528).

  • Climate change, further destabilizing ecological resilience and plant regeneration.

  • Cultural erosion as sacred plant use is commodified, decoupled from Indigenous stewardship, and subject to biopiracy (Chacruna Institute 2025).

These pressures interact across scales. Forest conversion can eliminate or fragment microhabitats favored by Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis, while market-driven extraction can shift plants out of reciprocal cultivation regimes into supply chains that rarely account for regeneration or cultural continuity. For Brugmansia, which frequently persists in anthropogenic settings, risks revolve less around extinction in the narrow sense and more around loss of locally adapted lineages, ceremonial knowledge, and the social institutions that regulate its dangerous potency.

Sustainable conservation strategies include:

  • Supporting Indigenous land tenure and resource governance, shown to drastically reduce deforestation (EDF/Vital Signs 2023).

  • Integrating Indigenous and Western science for ecological monitoring, genetic diversity studies, and sustainable harvest planning (Science 2024).

  • Recognizing biocultural rights in legal frameworks, ensuring benefit-sharing and informed consent (Frontiers in Conservation Science 2025, doi:10.3389/fcosc.2025.1569528).

  • Strengthening community-managed cultivation of vines and shrubs to buffer against pressure on wild stocks while maintaining lineage diversity and ritual frameworks.

  • Developing transparent, locally governed supply protocols for ceremonial centers and international participants that prioritize in situ cultivation and prohibit removal of plant material from community gardens without consent.

  • Investing in long-term monitoring of demographic trends and habitat integrity across representative landscapes, including understory shrubs and lianas whose population dynamics are otherwise poorly visible in remote sensing.

  • Enhancing education on pharmacological risks—particularly with Brugmansia—and supporting culturally grounded safeguards to prevent misuse.

In policy terms, the conservation of entheogenic plants is inseparable from Indigenous territorial rights, collective intellectual property, and customary institutions. A conservation agenda that focuses only on species and habitats, without sustained partnership with the peoples who have co-evolved with these plants culturally and horticulturally, risks reproducing extractive dynamics under a green veneer (Science 2024). Conversely, initiatives that center Indigenous leadership and reciprocal obligations—ceremonial, ecological, and political—demonstrate reduced deforestation, robust biodiversity outcomes, and the perpetuation of living knowledge systems that anchor sustainable use (EDF/Vital Signs 2023).

Given the gaps in IUCN assessments and the variability of local pressures, precautionary approaches are warranted. For Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis, this includes discouraging wild harvesting in intact forests, prioritizing community-cultivated stocks, and documenting lineage diversity to avoid genetic bottlenecks. For Brugmansia, safeguarding ritual expertise and locally adapted clones—together with clear community protocols governing access—is critical to prevent both toxicological harm and cultural loss. Ultimately, conservation is best framed as a biocultural compact that recognizes these plants not as disembodied commodities but as relational beings embedded in specific landscapes, histories, and polities (Frontiers in Conservation Science 2025, doi:10.3389/fcosc.2025.1569528).

References

  1. Frontiers in Conservation Science. “Of shrub, cactus, vine and toad: psychedelic species of conservation concern.” 2025. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcosc.2025.1569528

  2. Science. “Indigenizing conservation science for a sustainable Amazon.” Science, 383:243, 2024. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn5616

  3. Amazon Watch. “Endangered Amazonia: Illicit economies article.” 2025. https://amazonwatch.org/assets/files/2025-11-endangered-amazonia-iIllicit-economies-article.pdf

  4. WI-FRI. “Ecosystem and Biodiversity of Amazonia.” 2025. https://www.wifri.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/133763o.pdf

  5. EDF/Vital Signs. “Deep inside the Amazon, Indigenous leaders are fighting to preserve rainforest and stabilize the climate.” 2023. https://vitalsigns.edf.org/photo-essay/deep-inside-amazon-indigenous-leaders-are-fighting-preserve-rainforest-and-stabilize

  6. Chacruna Institute. “Entheogen Stewardship Project—Protecting Sacred Plants and Indigenous Wisdom.” 2025. https://mckenna.academy/mka-podcast/entheogen-stewardship-project-protecting-sacred-plants-and-indigenous-wisdom/

  7. Brightman, M., Grotti, V.E., & Ulturgasheva, O. (eds.) Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia. Berghahn Books, 2012. https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/BrightmanAnimism

  8. Rainforest Expeditions. “Gold of the Jungle: Medicinal Plants in the Amazon Rainforest.” 2024. https://www.rainforestexpeditions.com/gold-of-the-jungle-medicinal-plants-in-the-amazon-rainforest/

License

CC BY-SA 4.0 – Yaogará Ark — a living ethnobotanical research archive