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Nature Up Close
| Article
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20352 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1992 |
1,635 Words |
| Author
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Connie Sue Bettinger
Connie Sue Bettinger is a botanist and free-lance writer based
in Hyattsville, Maryland. |
Bill Klein is a retired high school biology teacher. Had he been a college professor, he would probably have had the chance to do research in exotic sites, but that opportunity was not available to him professionally. Now he wants to experience places that he has taught about, so he and his wife are plunking down eight thousand dollars and are off to the Galapagos Islands, with a side trip to La Selva, an ecological station in Ecuador. They will finally get to see a humpback whale, Darwin's finches, and a tropical rainforest. They, like many other people, have discovered ecotourism.
Ecotourism is the most rapidly growing type of travel. Several hundred U.S. companies sell tours to ecologically significant or endangered areas, and over seven million Americans took advantage of them last year.
Some ecologists argue that ecotourism is a positive development because the tours bring in funds that enhance local economies and effectively save wilderness areas from being developed and destroyed. The number of people who have visited and can knowledgeably defend threatened areas is increased dramatically, and tourist dollars from these tours may support research. Some ecotours are intrinsically designed to be environmentally low impact because they cater to small, ecologically minded groups that treat the environments they visit with utmost care.
Other scientist worry about less environmentally conscious tourists degrading the wilderness areas they visit. There is concern over facilities being built for tourists that disrupt local ecosystems. These critics are questioning the carrying capacity of each ecosystem: What population of even the best visitors can wilderness areas support without being damaged or deteriorating?
As ecotourism becomes increasingly trendy, it is hard to say what the environmental impact will be. All tourism in the Galapagos Islands is thought to be strictly controlled by the Ecuadorian government, for example. Yet, it has been estimated that double the legal number of tourists visited the islands last year while the impoverished South American government turned a blind eye.
Can such a thing as "ecotourism" exist--or is the term itself oxymoronic? Can man, that historically unbenign being, visit a wilderness without destroying or at least altering it by his very presence? Regardless of whether it is intrinsically the right thing to do or is being done in the right way, ecotourism is gaining popularity by leaps and
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