Tourists can contribute to biodiversity knowledge

Data on biodiversity remains scarce. For example, an estimated 93% of the Earth's surface lacks data at a 5-kilometer resolution. Riva and his colleagues investigated whether nature tourism can be a source of biodiversity data from underrepresented regions. Their study was published in BioScience. 

In Rwanda, they recorded all the species they observed with the help of a local guide. They recorded these observations in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) to evaluate how much new information they could provide with a relaxed biodiversity recording approach. 

New locations collected 
''The yield far exceeded our expectations'', says Riva. ''Thanks to the great expertise of our guide, we collected 256 observations of 146 bird, mammal, reptile, insect and plant species. For 105 species, we recorded at least one new location compared to the data openly available in GBIF. These locations also include locations for many uncommon species.'' The researchers added 12 new locations for 7 species with fewer than 10 occurrences, 59 new locations for 36 species with 10-100 occurrences, and 93 new locations for 62 species with more than 100 occurrences. 

Collaborating with local guides 
Researchers attempting to protect biodiversity in Rwanda can now capitalize on a bit more data thanks to this study, with a very limited time investment and no research costs. However, the implications of this study go further. Collaborations between local guides and nature tourists have the potential to significantly improve biodiversity data collection. 

Riva: ''Hundreds of thousands of tourists travel to tropical biodiversity hotspots each year, where biodiversity data remains sparse, and guides do describe local species to tourists. We estimated that recording even 1% of the data we collected would rapidly increase knowledge about biodiversity in many such areas. Hopefully our article can be a call to involve more nature tourists in biodiversity data collection.''