Ecosystem Protection

One facet of ecotourism is the community of indigenous people who are making the transition from exploiting their countryside for personal survival, to protecting the region in which they live and creating a sustainable economy for the benefit of all its members.

Deforestation of tropical rainforests is a major issue in many under-developed countries. Locals in many such lands have found it necessary to denude their homeland to survive. They simply didn’t know about any other possibilities. Ecotourism offers a sustainable answer for such localities, and some of those communities are already making the change.
A Radical Turnaround

An example of an indigenous people moving away from a non-sustainable economy to a healthy, ecotourism attraction occurred in Uganda recently. A wildlife reserve earmarked for destruction to make way for biofuel crops was saved after a study showed that it would earn more from eco-tourism.

Plans were in place for more than 17,000 acres of a Ugandan forest described as a “wildlife jewel” by a London Times reporter to be destroyed. The Mabira Forest Reserve near Lake Victoria was slated to be leveled and replanted with sugar cane for the production of ethanol.

A study by Nature Uganda, a conservation group, showed that the financial benefits of protecting the forest, the total of which covers 74,000 acres, and encouraging eco-tourism, vastly outstripped the potential of biofuel crops.

The Nature Uganda study reported the commercial value of tourism and carbon capture in Mabira was estimated at more than $316 million a year; sugar cane production would yield a maximum of 35,784 tons over three years and be worth less than $20 million.

As a result, ecotourism in Uganda is now the country’s second-biggest magnet for foreign currency and the Mabira Forest Reserve brings in 62 per cent of income from trips to forest reserves.