Ethnobotanist and Conservationist Anthony Cunningham Receives 2025 ABC Steven Foster Botanical Conservation and Sustainability Award

/EIN News/ -- Austin, Texas, May 05, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The nonprofit American Botanical Council (ABC) has presented its ABC Steven Foster Botanical Conservation and Sustainability Award for 2025 to Anthony “Tony” B. Cunningham, PhD, a respected ethnobotanist, ethnoecologist, conservationist, artist, and adjunct professor at Murdoch University in western Australia.

The ABC Steven Foster Award was created in 2022 and recognizes excellence in conservation and sustainability efforts related to medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs). It is named in honor of botanist, author, and photographer Steven Foster (1957–2022) and commemorates his many years of professional interest, writing, and advocacy work in this field.

Each year since Foster’s passing, the ABC Foster Award recognizes an individual, nonprofit organization, or commercial herb company that is committed to sustainable and/or regenerative practices in the botanical industry or wider community. Recipients of this award take action to address botanical conservation and sustainability issues and contribute to a broader understanding of cultural and biological diversity, soil health, climate change, economic justice, and more. They also demonstrate appreciation for the beauty of the natural world.

Foster had more than 40 years of experience with sustainability and conservation of herbs and medicinal plants. He served on ABC’s Board of Trustees for more than two decades (including 10 years as chair), was a consultant and content contributor for ABC’s former Sustainable Herbs Program (which is now the independent Sustainable Herbs Initiative), advocated for botanical industry trade resolutions to protect threatened medicinal botanicals, and was a founding member of the advisory board of the United Plant Savers (UpS), a nonprofit plant conservation organization, which was the inaugural recipient of the ABC Foster Award in 2022.

“I admired Steven’s amazing photos of herbs and medicinal plants long before I got to meet him at botanical meetings in the United States,” Cunningham wrote. “Although from different parts of the world, we shared a common interest in conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plants. I am honoured, therefore, to receive the ABC Steven Foster Botanical Conservation and Sustainability Award for 2025.”

Cunningham has 45 years of experience focusing on uses and trade of natural resources, including understanding value chain analyses and creating practical conservation solutions related to local livelihoods and sustainable use. He has taught students in Australia, China, India, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Uganda, and the United States (University of Hawai‘i) and has mentored master’s degree and doctoral students from diverse cultural backgrounds (including from China, Fiji, Indonesia, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda). His geographic areas of work experience include Africa, Asia, and Australia, and, to a lesser extent, the South Pacific and the Arabian Peninsula.

Cunningham’s major interests include multiscale links between people and natural resource use and how local community/conservation conflicts can be avoided through informed land-use planning and sustainable resource use. He has authored or co-authored more than 150 publications (mainly in English, but also translated to Chinese, French, Italian, and Spanish). His book on plant resource management, Applied Ethnobotany: People, Wild Plant Use & Conservation (Earthscan, 2001), is widely used for teaching purposes at universities across the world and is available in English, Spanish (2002), and Chinese (2004).

Over the past 45 years, Cunningham has established strong links with international organizations, particularly in China, Indonesia, and across Africa. He has a 35-year connection with the Kunming Institute of Botany (KIB) in Kunming, Yunnan, China, and a 20-year connection with the Chengdu Institute of Biology (CIB) in Chengdu, Sichuan, China, both of which are members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2004, he was named the Gerrit Wilder Chair in Botany at the University of Hawai‘i. Between 1995 and 2002, he was an honorary staff member at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.

Cunningham was president of the International Society of Ethnobiology (ISE) (1992–1994); ISE board member (1990–1992, 1995–1997); board member of the Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge (CBIK) in Yunnan, China (2001–2004); and co-chair of the Medicinal Plant Specialist Group (MPSG) of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN’s) Species Survival Commission (SSC) (1993–1998). Most of his life has been spent working with local people, including traditional healers, basket makers, traditional textile producers, and woodcarvers, to develop practical solutions to resource management problems.

In 2016, the Society for Ethnobotany (SEB, formerly called the Society for Economic Botany) recognized his experience through its Distinguished Ethnobotanist (formerly called the Distinguished Economic Botanist) award as a lifetime achievement.

Cunningham received a bachelor’s degree in botany and entomology from the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, in 1977, a bachelor’s degree in entomology from Rhodes University in Grahamstown (now Makhanda), South Africa, in 1978, a PhD in botany from the University of Cape Town in 1985, and a master’s degree in social science from the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa, in 1993.

ABC has recognized Cunningham’s contributions to botanical and environmental sciences for decades. In HerbalGram issue 43 in 1998, Steven Foster reviewed the 1997 project report “Trade in Prunus africana and the Implementation of CITES,” which Cunningham co-authored. In his review, Foster wrote, “Given its thorough treatment of the subject with clear recommendations and strategies for long-term development of P. africana supplies, the report serves as a model for other phytomedicine source plant conservation efforts.” 

In a review of Cunningham’s book Applied Ethnobotany in HerbalGram issue 59 in 2003, ethnobotanist Steven R. King, PhD, wrote, “In summary, this is a must-have manual for anyone working with people and plant resources. It is especially useful for anyone associated with the management of national parks or protected areas anywhere in the world.” In HerbalGram issue 85 in 2010, Cunningham and Josef Brinckmann, the current president of ABC’s Board of Trustees, wrote an article, “‘Cinderella’ Schisandra: A Project Linking Conservation and Local Livelihoods in the Upper Yangtze Ecoregion of China,” which also featured Cunningham’s plant and landscape photography.

“Tony is not only an internationally renowned ethnobotanist and ethnoecologist but also a fine artist and photographer,” wrote Brinckmann, who endorsed Cunningham for the award. “I met Tony in the early 2000s through a German government-supported steering group that was tasked with drafting the first ‘International Standard for the Sustainable Wild Collection of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants’ (ISSC-MAP), which relied on Tony’s prior resource assessment experience. The steering group involved participants from the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), IUCN’s MPSG, TRAFFIC, and the herbal industry.

“Over the decades, Tony has worked tirelessly, carrying out field research and studies for nature conservation NGOs, governmental CITES authorities, and United Nations agencies, in recent years focusing on highly traded MAP species in the Boswellia, Commiphora, Griffonia, Prunus, and Rhodiola genera, among others,” Brinckmann added. “It has indeed been an honor and a privilege for me to learn so much from Tony as he generously invited me to collaborate with him on projects including an EU-China Biodiversity Programme project ‘Sustainable Management of Traditional Medicinal Plants in the High-Biodiversity Landscapes of Upper Yangtze Eco-region’ (2007–2011) and, more recently, CITES-related research for the German BfN and also the CITES Secretariat.”

Previous recipients of the ABC Foster Award are Danna J. Leaman, PhD (2024); the FairWild Foundation (2023); and UpS (2022). The 2025 ABC Foster Award was presented at the 20th annual ABC Celebration and Botanical Excellence Awards Ceremony on March 4, 2025, in Anaheim, California, during the annual Natural Products Expo West conference and trade show.

The 2025 ABC Celebration and Botanical Excellence Awards were generously underwritten by donations from Alkemist Labs, Amin Wasserman Gurnani, Applied Food Sciences, Brassica Protection Products, Cepham, Eurofins, Euromed, Gaia Herbs, Herb Pharm, Indena, Informa, Nature’s Way, NOW Foods, Pharmatoka, RFI, RT Specialty, Sabinsa, Talati, Terry Naturally/EuroPharma, and the United Natural Products Alliance.

About the American Botanical Council

Riane Roldan
                    American Botanical Council
                    512-926-4900 ext. 129
                    publicrelations@herbalgram.org