About the Author
Mark Plotkin is a renowned ethnobotanist and best-selling author of Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice (in it’s 27th printing) and The Killers Within. For much of the past 30 years, he has worked with and learned from the ancient shamans in the rainforests of Central and South America, providing him with incomparable knowledge of healing plants and shamanic traditions. He formerly served as Research Associate in Ethnobotanical Conservation as the Botanical Museum of Harvard University, Director of Plant Conservation at the World Wildlife Fund and Vice President of Conservation International and Research Associate at the Department of Botany of the Smithsonian Institution. In Washington, D.C., Plotkin currently serves as President of the Amazon Conservation Team, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting biological and cultural diversity of the tropical rain forest. Lisa Famolare is vice president of conservation policy and strategy Guianas and the Guianas regional program at Conservation International.

This book is based on papers presented at the conference on "The Sustainable Harvest and Marketing of Rain Forest Products", held in Panama City, Panama on June 20 to 21, 1991. This conference was coordinated by Conservation International (CI), a Washington, D.C., based nonprofit international environmental organization, with help from the Asociaci˜n Nacional para la Conservaci˜n de la Naturaleza (ANCON). Conservation International (CI) is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation of tropical and temperate ecosystems and species that rely on these habitats for their survival.