Ecotourism as a threatening process for wild orchids

Abstract

Orchids are a charismatic and highly diverse group of plants, many of which are threatened by human activities. Nature-based tourism is contributing to the decline of some wild orchid populations, although this has rarely been discussed in the tourism literature. We therefore provide a scoping assessment to demonstrate that tourism contributes to the loss of some orchids in the wild by direct collecting, habitat clearance and trampling, and/or indirectly by increasing the impact of other threats such as weeds, pathogens and climate change using data on Australian threatened orchids. Increased recognition and more research are required into the role of nature-based tourism in the declines of these and other species of threatened plants as well as into the ways in which impacts can be mitigated.