Sustainability of Artemisia umbelliformis gathering in the wild: An integration of ecological conditions and harvesting exposure

Abstract

Harvesting of wild plants is a traditional practice that is sustainable if the plant populations reproduce and persist. The génépi, Artemisia umbelliformis, occurs on crests and summits in the Alps, and is harvested mainly by amateurs. However, little is known about the ecology of this species and the practice of harvesting has received little scientific attention. Here we assess the sustainability of génépi harvesting through an integrative approach combining: (1) the quantification of spatial ecological variation across the distribution of A. umbelliformis in the southern Alps and (2) the examination of the social-ecological parameters that modulate the intensity of harvesting practices. We showed that topographic roughness is important for the presence of the species at a 25‑m resolution, while its cover at a 1‑m resolution is mainly influenced by space availability (with a fine‑grained stony substrate and limited vegetal cover). Our results show how the amateur activity of harvesting depends on resource availability, sitehiking attractiveness, and to a lesser extent the accessibility of the harvesting site. More precisely, harvesting intensity is more closely correlated with resource availability at the landscape scale than at the harvesting site scale, with a stronger importance of plant density in a large zone (500 m and 1 km buffers) than local density in a given site. Finally, we map both the potential ecological sensitivity of A. umbelliformis and its exposure to harvesting to produce an integrated ecological risk assessment for the conservation of this species. This study illustrates how the concept of the niche can be more precisely recognised by integrating both human and ecological dimensions, particularly when dealing with the sustainability of wild plant harvesting.