This author believes that this is due to a perception, often accurate, that there is not a steady funding source for these disciplines and that the funding that is out there is often mired in controversy. The current consortium of a small number of programs that exists off a mixture of funds from both private and public sources is viewed with suspicion due to the heavy emphasis on dollars from the pharmaceutical industry, even where NIH money is also involved. Pharmaceutical money is of use, but cannot escape the pharmaceutical industry's own necessary agenda, which is to make money to replenish research dollars, and a corporate outlook of ownership and control of any useful information to emerge from the studies. This has contributed greatly to suspicion between indigenous communities, foreign governments and researchers and has stifled a number of projects. If a stable, politically neutral funding source for basic research could be found for economic and ethnobotany, surely biology departments would welcome those best suited to compete for these dollars.
Biologists claim to care about the environment.
They cannot save the planet without an informed and willing public which recognizes their own interest in maintaining healthy wild ecosystems and which is willingly committed to finding a functioning balance between use and protection of wild resources. Economic and ethnobotany is being sought by graduate and undergraduates students of all disciplines as the area in which they want to learn more about this during their experience in higher education. The general public is increasingly voicing support for greater dissemination of accurate information on useful plants, a major stepping stone to developing in that public an understanding of the importance of protecting wild resources broadly. NSF has just been granted its largest budget ever as part of an effort to step up funding in research generally in response to the new, technologically driven economy and in recognition of the need for research to find environmentally sound ways to keep the economy growing. Thus there has not been a better time to find the money to correct these problems.