Announcing: A Guide to Building Ethical Orchid Collections & Societies

Alongside Orchid Societies from around the world, the IUCN SCC Orchid Specialist Group's Global Trade Programme is pleased to announce the launch of a new resource for Societies.

A Guide of Building Ethical Orchid Collections & Societies is a resource that suggests ways for Orchid Societies to help promote best practices among our members, events and community – to foster sustainable collections and societies. It seeks to balance our enjoyment of plants with our shared commitment to species conservation. 

The Guide is available in English, Spanish, Indonesia, Chinese and Portuguese here

We share a common interest in the long-term survival of orchids in the wild.  However, sometimes this interest in orchids drives one of the leading threats to their survival: wild orchids are still harvested as ornamental plants in many countries. Harvest is often driven by international trade and commercial collectors, but also involves local markets, online trade, as well as semi-professional collectors and direct harvest by orchid growers for personal collections.

Many Societies want to promote sustainable practices and conservation initiatives, which is why they contributed to developing this Guide.  The resulting resource suggests how we can all help promote more sustainable practices through our collections, sales, shows and actions.  It offers key principles and suggestions that Societies can edit and adopt according to their needs. It is not a fixed set of rules, nor is every point relevant to all Societies. Instead, it aims to be flexible, inclusive and useful to growers around the world.  

We invite Societies to consider the Guide as a tool to help inform future discussions about our collective responsibility to support orchid conservation.