diff --git a/R/fetchSOLUS.R b/R/fetchSOLUS.R
index 544e4e1f..7da56086 100644
--- a/R/fetchSOLUS.R
+++ b/R/fetchSOLUS.R
@@ -227,6 +227,9 @@ fetchSOLUS <- function(x = NULL,
 .get_SOLUS_index <- function() {
   
   # TODO: parse XML directly instead of HTML?
+  if (!requireNamespace("rvest")) {
+    stop("package 'rvest' is required", call. = FALSE)  
+  }
   
   # read index as HTML table
   res <- rvest::html_table(rvest::read_html("https://storage.googleapis.com/solus100pub/index.html"), header = FALSE)[[1]]
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test-fetchSOLUS.R b/tests/testthat/test-fetchSOLUS.R
index 3ee8196c..e87058f7 100644
--- a/tests/testthat/test-fetchSOLUS.R
+++ b/tests/testthat/test-fetchSOLUS.R
@@ -10,6 +10,8 @@ test_that("fetchSOLUS works", {
   
   skip_if_not_installed("terra")
   
+  skip_if_not_installed("rvest")
+  
   b <- c(-119.747629, -119.67935, 36.912019, 36.944987)
   
   bbox.sp <- sf::st_as_sf(wk::rct(
@@ -55,6 +57,8 @@ test_that("virtual and out-of-bounds requests", {
   
   skip_if_not_installed("terra")
   
+  skip_if_not_installed("rvest")
+  
   # virtual raster for one variable*depth
   tmp <- fetchSOLUS(variables = "claytotal",
                     output_type = "prediction",