Mushrooms as a tourist attraction on an ecological trail

Abstract

Ecotourism traditions in Belarus are relatively new and are still created. One of the formed and well proven trends is ecological trails. The objects that deserve more attention for showing and discussion, are the mushrooms and mushroom-like organisms. Guides in their stories about mushrooms pay little attention to their biology, ecology, species composition, and so on, despite the fact that by the number of species composition, mushrooms several times exceed vascular plants and are roughly comparable to a variety of insects known for Belarus. The successful involvement of the fungal component in the guide stories requires special training of highly qualified specialists, possessing both questions related to the knowledge of mycology and have the basics of guided tours. The most effective this can be achieved by including the mycological sub-themes in tours on already prepared educationa l and informative ecological trails, as evidenced by the “mushroom topic” method on a practical training of students. The story of the guide on environ-mental issues during the passage of the route should be strictly focuse d on this specific target audience of listeners. The most relevant, causing increased interest from tourists, on the ecological trail are the questions that affect aspects of the edible and po isonous mushrooms, the appearance of fruiting bodies, the conservation of species diversity of this group of organisms, their role in nature and the possibility of economic use as well as a wide range of other problems, including the environment, ecology, phyto-pathology athers.