This website aims to be a gateway to a world of collaboration and partnership which strives to add value to the field of zoopharmacognosy by promoting cooperation between joint venture partners, researchers and interdisciplinary end-users working in fields as diverse as:

• Wildlife Health and Conservation
• Ecosystems and Ecology
• Pharmaceutical and Nutraceutical natural drug discovery
• Animal Health
• Animal disease control and management, including zoonoses
• Veterinary research
• Agriculture and livestock health

By sharing and combining the perspectives, knowledge and skills of academics, government departments, private professionals and non-government organisations, we can generate avenues of strong synergy that increase the effectiveness of available resources and explore strategies to open up new doorways of immense opportunity.

Further exploration of animal self-medication behaviour (zoopharmacognosy) using plant secondary metabolites is an innate survival tool that could offer a more cost-effective approach in safeguarding the health and welfare of both wildlife groups, selected individual animals and optimise wildlife management and disease control. In addition, providing environmental enrichment benefits a variety of conservation efforts helping us to establish a more synergistic relationship with nature. It is more important to judge the effectiveness of zoopharmacognosy than it is to seek rational explanations for it and is less analytical and more a descriptive process using semiotics.

The health of wild free-roaming animals is highly influenced by the ecosystems and environments they live within. The botanical sources voluntarily selected by animals to restore and maintain their health offer important clues about habitat suitability, especially if disease or illness is present. And as the climate changes, even minor disturbances in their environment have far-reaching consequences regarding the diseases they encounter and transmit.

Alongside environmental sustainability, improving animal welfare practices is a core component of maintaining the long-term health of livestock and domestic animals. Developing zoopharmacognosy methods for improving their immunity and disease resistance helps reduce the risk of zoonotic disease transmission..

Zoopharmacognosy research can help to preserve biological diversity and ecosystems. It can contribute towards the creation and maintenance of stable agricultural ecosystems, restore fragile or damaged habitats and safeguard natural ecosystems. Further exploration will provide us with clues about the needs and requirements of wild and free-roaming animals, allowing us to critically assess the suitability of their habitat if there is disease or illness present. It will also provide a greater understanding of our fragile ecosystems, animal populations and their survival.

Zoonoses is of growing global concern and zoopharmacognosy can help reduce the transmission of zoonotic diseases and parasites between animals and humans. Developing a supportive framework using the principles of zoopharmacognosy will allow animals to exercise their natural innate responses and behaviours and improve their own immunity and disease resistance.

Zoopharmacognosy can have a significant impact on the health of wild animals and consequently on the health of human populations and global economies. It can offer more radical thinking when setting research agendas and developing implementation strategies aimed at controlling and managing animal-borne diseases.

Animal selections of botanical remedies do share some common ground with indigenous medicinal plant knowledge and our own traditional medicine. The exploration of animal zoopharmacogosy behaviour has already resulted in the discovery of many bio-active botanical compounds subsequently researched for veterinary and human medicine.

However, the resultant benefits to both animal and human health advances remains unknown as long as the true relationship with secondary metabolites remains under-examined. The plant secondary metabolites an animal selects or rejects in response to veterinary diagnosed conditions offers vital clues to advancing pharmaceutical and nutraceutical research. Zoopharmacogosy can enhance new natural drug developments and research initiatives about our natural resources, and may provide a cost-effective approach to the ever-increasing costs of new drug discovery and development.