Abstract
Orienteering is a relatively popular sport in the Czech Republic with more than 7,000 registered competitors. Some ecologists have stated that orienteering, thanks to its off-track nature and the large numbers of competitors, has the potential to damage flora and fauna.
In practice, many thousands of orienteering events are held worldwide each year and ecological incidents resulting in unacceptable damage are extremely rare - in fact, close to zero. Unlike some other sports pursued in natural surroundings, orienteering does not require any long-term modifications to the natural landscape, no special devices, and no buildings.
And on the other hand, this sport has important social dimensions, as all age groups, including families, meet at sports events and from the performance point of view, are catered for with (almost) equal importance. The author proposes to use methods similar to those used in tourism by some authors in the past for evaluation of the environmental sustainability of orienteering sport, namely Ecological Footprint (EF) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)