If you walk in the Peppara Wildlife Sanctuary, you are walking in forest the Kani have lived in and used for a very long time. One episode from that history is cited in law schools and conservation courses around the world, and it is usually told as a success.

This site told it that way too. It is worth telling properly.

What happened

In 1987, researchers from the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute were on a botanical expedition in these hills when they noticed something about their Kani guides: the guides were eating the fruit of a plant, and they were not tiring.

The plant was Trichopus zeylanicus, known to the Kani as arogyappacha — roughly, the green that gives strength. The institute studied it and developed a herbal formulation marketed as Jeevani, sold as an anti-fatigue and immune-supporting preparation.

What made the case famous was the decision to share the proceeds. A share of licence income was directed to the Kani, administered through a trust set up for the purpose. At a moment when the standard story about indigenous knowledge was straightforward extraction, this looked like a genuine alternative, and it was celebrated internationally as a model.

What is usually left out

The Kani informants were not named as co-inventors on the patent. The knowledge was theirs; the invention, legally, was not.

The royalty share was two per cent — low by international comparison, and a reflection of who was in a position to negotiate and who was not.

Many Kani have said they were inadequately consulted about an arrangement made on their behalf. The trust intended to distribute the money became a focus of dispute rather than of benefit, and the celebrated experiment slid into distrust within a few years.

And in 2008 the patent expired, taking with it the limited protection the arrangement had rested on.

Kuttimathan Kani

On 23 August 2025, the forest elder who had first shown the researchers the plant died at the age of 72, in a leaking hut on the edge of these forests. He had spent much of his life working as a daily-wage labourer.

The plant he pointed at produced a product, a body of scientific literature, and an internationally cited precedent in the law of traditional knowledge. It did not produce a living for him.

Why this belongs on a page about a walk

Because the alternative is the version where this catchment is empty forest that scientists came and discovered things in. That framing is doing real work, and it is not accurate: the sanctuary contains Kani settlements, and the botany in question was not discovered so much as noticed, already in use, by people who had known it for generations.

Calling a lived-in forest a wilderness is the move that makes the rest of it possible. If you take a guided walk here, that is the piece of context worth carrying in with you — not as guilt, but as an accurate description of whose forest you are in.

Frequently asked questions

What is arogyappacha?

A medicinal plant, Trichopus zeylanicus, endemic to the Western Ghats and long used by the Kani, who call it roughly "the green that gives strength". Researchers noticed Kani guides eating its fruit on a 1987 expedition and observing that it appeared to counter fatigue.

What was Jeevani?

The herbal formulation developed from arogyappacha by the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute and licensed for commercial manufacture, sold as an anti-fatigue and immune-supporting preparation. A share of the licence income was directed to a Kani trust.

Was the benefit-sharing agreement a success?

It is taught as one, and on the community’s side of it the record is much less comfortable. The Kani informants were not named as co-inventors, the royalty was two per cent, consultation was widely felt to be inadequate, the trust became a source of dispute, and the patent lapsed in 2008.

Who was Kuttimathan Kani?

The forest elder who first showed the researchers arogyappacha. He died on 23 August 2025 aged 72, in poverty, in a leaking hut on the edge of these forests, having worked much of his life as a daily-wage labourer.

Do Kani people live inside the sanctuary?

Yes. The sanctuary contains Kani settlements. Descriptions of this catchment as untouched wilderness — including some previously on this site — are inaccurate, and the framing matters, because it is what allows knowledge already in use to be described as a discovery.