Neglect of biological riches: the economics of nature tourism in Nepal

Nepal's spectacular parks and reserves have attracted dramatically increasing numbers of foreign visitors. It might be expected that these protected areas would be nurtured as valuable and irreplaceable economic assets. However they are becoming seriously degraded and the financial resources provided for their management have been inadequate. This paper explores why — starting with the hypothesis that so little of the economic value of protected area tourism in Nepal is captured through fees and other charges assessed on foreign visitors that the protected areas are perceived as being of inconsequential value. It is conservatively estimated that $27 million of tourists' total expenditure in Nepal were attributable to the protected area network in 1988, when the costs of managing the parks were less than $5 million but direct fees colleeted from tourists visiting the protected areas amounted to less than $1 million. These figures suggest the parks are a good investment. But it could also be argued that the costs of park management were more than five times the revenues collected by the government from park tourists. Policy measures are identified which could help Nepal increase the economic as well as environmental benefits from nature tourism.Case studies of Nepal's most-visited protected areas emphasize that the lack of funds for protected area management is not the only constraint on effective management. Some important economic and institutional interests have yet to be effectively reconciled with conservation in the protected areas. Most problematic are local people's economic aspirations and the operating practices of the principal government agencies involved — the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation and the Ministry of Tourism. Fortunately there have recently been some encouraging signs of change within both of these agencies.     

Wildlife Abundance and Diversity as Indicators of Tourism Potential in Northern Botswana

Wildlife tourism can provide economic incentives for conservation. Due to the abundance of wildlife and the presence of charismatic species some areas are better suited to wildlife tourism. Our first objective was to develop criteria based on wildlife abundance and diversity to evaluate tourism potential in the Northern Conservation Zone of Botswana. Secondly we wanted to quantify and compare tourism experiences in areas with high and low tourism potential. We used aerial survey data to estimate wildlife biomass and diversity to determine tourism potential, while data from ground surveys quantified the tourist experience. Areas used for High Paying Low Volume tourism had significantly higher mean wildlife biomass and wildlife diversity than the areas avoided for this type of tourism. Only 22% of the Northern Conservation Zone has intermediate to high tourism potential. The areas with high tourism potential, as determined from the aerial survey data, provided tourists with significantly better wildlife sightings (ground surveys) than the low tourism potential areas. Even Low Paying tourism may not be economically viable in concessions that lack areas with intermediate to high tourism potential. The largest part of the Northern Conservation Zone has low tourism potential, but low tourism potential is not equal to low conservation value. Alternative conservation strategies should be developed to complement the economic incentive provided by wildlife-based tourism in Botswana.     

Can tourism make a major contribution to the conservation of protected areas in Madagascar?

The authors review the anticipated benefits from tourism for protected areas in Madagascar, the mechanisms that have been adopted, and how these are working at national and local levels. The contribution of tourism to the maintenance of Protected Areas in Madagascar is assessed. The anticipated benefits of tourism envisaged by the 1991 National Environmental Action Plan are considered to be over-optimistic. The growth rate in tourist arrivals is found to be smaller than previously anticipated as a result of infrastructural constraints at national and local scales. It is suggested that revenues from tourism are inadequate in meeting park management costs although the local transfer of entrance fee revenues to development projects is found to be more beneficial. It is also argued that the benefits of revenue sharing can be effective only for a limited number of protected areas until unfrastructure is improved and protected areas become more accessible to tourists.     

Drivers and socioeconomic impacts of tourism participation in protected areas

Nature-based tourism has the potential to enhance global biodiversity conservation by providing alternative livelihood strategies for local people, which may alleviate poverty in and around protected areas. Despite the popularity of the concept of nature-based tourism as an integrated conservation and development tool, empirical research on its actual socioeconomic benefits, on the distributional pattern of these benefits, and on its direct driving factors is lacking, because relevant long-term data are rarely available. In a multi-year study in Wolong Nature Reserve, China, we followed a representative sample of 220 local households from 1999 to 2007 to investigate the diverse benefits that these households received from recent development of nature-based tourism in the area. Within eight years, the number of households directly participating in tourism activities increased from nine to sixty. In addition, about two-thirds of the other households received indirect financial benefits from tourism. We constructed an empirical household economic model to identify the factors that led to household-level participation in tourism. The results reveal the effects of local households' livelihood assets (i.e., financial, human, natural, physical, and social capitals) on the likelihood to participate directly in tourism. In general, households with greater financial (e.g., income), physical (e.g., access to key tourism sites), human (e.g., education), and social (e.g., kinship with local government officials) capitals and less natural capital (e.g., cropland) were more likely to participate in tourism activities. We found that residents in households participating in tourism tended to perceive more non-financial benefits in addition to more negative environmental impacts of tourism compared with households not participating in tourism. These findings suggest that socioeconomic impact analysis and change monitoring should be included in nature-based tourism management systems for long-term sustainability of protected areas.     

保护区发展生态旅游的意义和途径

生态旅游在世界范围内正经历着一个蓬勃发展的时期,它是一个区域或一个保护区生态发展的重要内容,不仅对地区经济和社会发展有重要的促进作用,而且也是激励保护区进一步发展的动力。当然,过分强调经济收入,无控制地发展旅游,就可能引起不适当的开发或管理不周。导致生态破坏。因此,保护区发展生态旅游要有一个周密的规划,寻找旅游者的享受和自然保护之间的平衡。     

The economic benefits of malaria elimination: do they include increases in tourism?

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Policy makers have speculated that one of the economic benefits of malaria elimination includes increases in foreign direct investment, particularly tourism. METHODS: The study examines the empirical relationship between the demand for travel and malaria cases in two countries with large tourism industries around the time in which they carried out malaria-elimination campaigns. In Mauritius, this analysis examines historical yearly tourist arrivals and malaria cases from 1978-1999, accounting for the background secular trend of increasing international travel. In Dominican Republic, a country embarking upon malaria elimination, it employs a time-series analyses of the monthly, international, tourist arrivals from 1998-2010 to determine whether the timing of significant deviations in tourist arrivals coincides with malaria outbreaks. RESULTS: While naive relationships exist in both cases, the results show that the relationships between tourist arrival and malaria cases are relatively weak and statistically insignificant once secular confounders are accounted for. CONCLUSIONS: This suggests that any economic benefits from tourism that may be derived from actively pursuing elimination in countries that may have high tourism potential are likely to be small when measured at a national level. Rather, tourism benefits are likely to be experienced with greater impact in more concentrated tourist areas within countries, and future studies should seek to assess this relationship at a regional or local level.     

我国自然保护区资金机制改革创新的几点思考

目前国际上自然保护地的资金投入规模远远低于实际需求, 未来融资机制需要创新, 包括吸引和利用外部资金、鼓励自行经营创收、基于保护地产品或服务的市场交易收费等, 其中鼓励创收主要指的是财政手段(例如生态税)、收益共享机制、管理成本共担机制、金融交易(例如碳排放交易)等。政治领域的制度规范、经济领域的市场、价格政策等都会影响保护地的融资机制, 保护地未来的融资机制将更多地依赖于财政、金融、市场、贸易相互结合的多元化融资手段。我国自然保护区目前存在资金来源结构不合理、资金规模太小, 支出结构不合理、缺乏周边社区补偿和收益共享机制等问题。为此, 作者提出以下建议: (1)确保中央财政承担国家级自然保护区的主要管理经费; (2)在充分发挥生态旅游服务付费、资源使用付费等传统产品(服务)收费型融资手段的基础上, 建立和完善生态系统服务付费、森林碳汇交易和保护区绿色产品认证等新的市场交易型融资渠道; (3)利用境外资金提升我国自然保护区的能力建设; (4)积极争取国内不同社会团体的资金支持, 条件允许的保护区可通过多方联合治理模式建立管理成本共担机制以及与周边社区的收益共享机制。(5)在资金使用方面, 在保障保护区工作人员基本薪酬福利的前提下, 将剩余资金包括经营收入优先用于核心保护业务的投资上, 同时加强资金的监管。     

Using Social Media to Measure the Contribution of Red List Species to the Nature-Based Tourism Potential of African Protected Areas

Cultural ecosystem services are defined by people’s perception of the environment, which make them hard to quantify systematically. Methods to describe cultural benefits from ecosystems typically include resource-demanding survey techniques, which are not suitable to assess cultural ecosystem services for large areas. In this paper we explore a method to quantify cultural benefits through the enjoyment of natured-based tourism, by assessing the potential tourism attractiveness of species for each protected area in Africa using the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species. We use the number of pictures of wildlife posted on a photo sharing website as a proxy for charisma, popularity, and ease of observation, as these factors combined are assumed to determine how attractive species are for the global wildlife tourist. Based on photo counts of 2473 African animals and plants, species that seem most attractive to nature-based tourism are the Lion, African Elephant and Leopard. Combining the photo counts with species range data, African protected areas with the highest potential to attract wildlife tourists based on attractive species occurrence were Samburu National Reserve in Kenya, Mukogodo Forest Reserve located just north of Mount Kenya, and Addo Elephant National Park in South-Africa. The proposed method requires only three data sources which are freely accessible and available online, which could make the proposed index tractable for large scale quantitative ecosystem service assessments. The index directly links species presence to the tourism potential of protected areas, making the connection between nature and human benefits explicit, but excludes other important contributing factors for tourism, such as accessibility and safety. This social media based index provides a broad understanding of those species that are popular globally; in many cases these are not the species of highest conservation concern.     

张家界武陵源风景区自然景观价值评估

自然景观提供给人们观赏、娱乐和休闲的效用和价值,长期以来,人们对自然景观的价值忽略并低估,导致在开发利用自然资源过程中出现资源浪费和生态破坏的问题.如果赋予自然景观合适的经济价值,能为其开发利用提供决策支持.为评价张家界武陵源风景区的景观价值,构建了相应的指标体系.自然景观价值乃使用价值与非使用价值之和,并对这两种价值分别运用旅行费用法和条件价值法进行评估.结果表明:2011年武陵源风景区的自然景观价值为89.01亿元,其中使用价值为79.30亿元,非使用价值为9.71亿元.分析表明,武陵源风景区的自然景观价值要远高于以往的研究及近年的旅游收入,建议景区当局全面认识其景观价值,在旅游人次不断攀升的形势下,全力保护该地生态环境,探究武陵源风景区的可持续发展道路.     

Tourism and the Conservation of Critically Endangered Frogs

Protected areas are critical for the conservation of many threatened species. Despite this, many protected areas are acutely underfunded, which reduces their effectiveness significantly. Tourism is one mechanism to promote and fund conservation in protected areas, but there are few studies analyzing its tangible conservation outcomes for threatened species. This study uses the 415 IUCN critically endangered frog species to evaluate the contribution of protected area tourism revenue to conservation. Contributions were calculated for each species as the proportion of geographic range inside protected areas multiplied by the proportion of protected area revenues derived from tourism. Geographic ranges were determined from IUCN Extent of Occurrence maps. Almost 60% (239) of critically endangered frog species occur in protected areas. Higher proportions of total range are protected in Nearctic, Australasian and Afrotopical regions. Tourism contributions to protected area budgets ranged from 5–100%. These financial contributions are highest for developing countries in the Afrotropical, Indomalayan and Neotropical regions. Data for both geographic range and budget are available for 201 critically endangered frog species with proportional contributions from tourism to species protection ranging from 0.8–99%. Tourism''s financial contributions to critically endangered frog species protection are highest in the Afrotropical region. This study uses a coarse measure but at the global scale it demonstrates that tourism has significant potential to contribute to global frog conservation efforts.     

In pursuit of ecotourism

Ecotourism is expected, by the tourism industry and academics, to grow rapidly over the next 20 years. Much has been written about ecotourism, often with missionary zeal, but there is little consensus about its definition. It is argued here that conservationists and protected area managers should adopt a definition of ecotourism which contributes to the maintenance of biodiversity and an appropriate definition is suggested.Ecotourism is not merely an alternative to mass tourism, nor is it the only alternative. The literature on nature tourism and the environmental impacts of the industry dates back to the late 1970s. Tourism is now the world's largest industry and it has an increasing impact on protected areas. Our understanding of these mechanisms, their ecological impacts and our capacity to manage tourism in protected areas lags behind the growth of tourism to protected areas.A rapid growth in nature tourism and tourism to protected areas has coincided with a shift in protected area management strategies towards integrated development. Tourism is one means available to protected area managers seeking to increase the economic value of a protected area and to offer sustainable opportunities for economic development to local people.This paper argues that potentially conflicting commercial, protected area and development interests all contribute to the emergence of ecotourism and have been doing so for many years. Ecotourism needs to be tightly defined if it is to benefit conservation. Protected area managers should consider how they can take control of nature tourism to the parks they manage and convert it into ecotourism for the benefit of conservation and the livelihoods of local people.     

Residents’ attitudes toward three protected areas in southwestern Nepal

Understanding people’s beliefs and attitudes toward protected areas is a key factor in developing successful management plans to conserve those areas over the long-term. Yet, most of the emphasis in understanding people’s perceptions has been on the conflicts that exist between people and protected areas, such as loss of traditional extraction access or damage by wildlife to crops and livestock. This study addresses the need to explore people’s attitudes toward protected areas in a way that allows them to define and describe the values they hold toward the areas and the relevant issues and concepts. Three contrasting protected areas in the southwestern region of Nepal were chosen for this study to gain a broad representation of the values people hold toward different types of protected areas. Three themes emerged that describe the positive perceptions residents have: recreation/esthetics, environmental preservation, and economic benefits. Four themes emerged that describe the negative perceptions: negative economic impacts, belief that benefits are for the government or foreigners, fear of wildlife, and negative interactions with park guards. People’s perceptions are affected by different aspects of the areas, including the size of the area and people’s access to them, management objectives, history, and tourism. The diversity of these perceptions suggests that conservation strategies should recognize both positive and negative perceptions and work to foster and integrate diverse values in order to more accurately reflect the reality and complexity of people’s lives.     

Effects of in situ phosphorus enrichment on the benthos in a subalpine karst stream and implications for bioassessment in nature reserves

Park managers in nature reserves need scientifically defensible and operationally feasible ecological indicators to better manage protected areas for both nature conservation and tourism. Such needs are much more urgent in karst aquatic ecosystems where spectacular natural scenic wonders attract millions of visitors to natural areas with streams and lakes that are particularly vulnerable to nutrient pollution. To identify a set of biotic indicators of phosphorus (P) pollution in a karst stream, we conducted an in situ P enrichment experiment in a nearly pristine karst stream located at a UNESCO world heritage site in China. Our results show that both benthic algal assemblages and macroinvertebrates were sensitive to P enrichment. Changes in diatoms (e.g., Achnanthidium minutissimum, Delicata delicatula) and macroinvertebrates (e.g., collectors) were indicative of P enrichment. The color change of travertine bryophyte beds from creamy white to green was largely due to increase in filamentous green algae such as Zygnema sp., which may provide a visual cue for P enrichment and pollution. Our findings, in conjunction with further studies that directly link these indicators with human disturbance (e.g., tourist activities) throughout the park, could improve the operation of park managers in minimizing tourist-induced nutrient pollution and in operationalizing these indicators in the current environmental monitoring and assessment program.     

Entrepreneurs, Elites, and Exclusion in Maasailand: Trends in Wildlife Conservation and Pastoralist Development

Maasai pastoralists in Kenya are rapidly diversifying. Maasai may now derive their main livelihoods (and sometimes considerable income) from farming, wildlife tourism, and/or the leasing of land for large-scale cereal cultivation. The spread of large-scale commercial cultivation competes with wildlife for grazing land, and wildlife populations around protected areas are rapidly declining as a result. This paper presents new data to analyse the way returns from different land uses, and the social structures affecting their distribution, influence the land-use choices being made by Maasai around the Mara National Reserve in Kenya. Returns to different interest groups from livestock, cultivation, and wildlife enterprises, seen in the light of current social, economic, and political trajectories, can help to clarify likely future land-use trends in the Mara. In particular, community conservation initiatives that seek to make conservation worthwhile to reserve-adjacent dwellers inevitably have a strong economic dimension. However, the choices made by Maasai landowners are not a simple function of the economic returns potentially accruing from a particular enterprise. They are as much or more influenced by who is able to control the different flows of returns from these different types of enterprise. These findings are relevant not only for the wider Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem, but also for pastoral livelihoods and wildlife conservation elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.     

Effectiveness of Protected Areas for biodiversity conservation: Mammal occupancy patterns in the Iguaçu National Park,Brazil

Protected areas – widely recognized as the main strategy for biodiversity conservation – have greatly expanded, covering ∼15% of the Earth; however, we still lack detailed information on biodiversity to evaluate their effectiveness. This is particularly urgent for biodiversity hotspots where protected areas are islands within human modified landscapes. We focus on mammals of the Iguaçu National Park – one of the most important parks in the Atlantic Forest hotspot – to evaluate the effectiveness of protected areas in conserving biodiversity. We monitored 300 km² with 37 cameras traps during five years to assess if (1) species occupancy declined over time, and (2) if species occupancy/detectability are spatially associated with illegal hunting, proximity to tourism infrastructure and distance from the edge, estimating the proportion of the park where these negative effects are detected. Many species that are rare in most Atlantic Forest remnants presented high occupancy within the park, and no decline in occupancy was observed over time. However, the distribution of 11 species was spatially associated primarily with the distance from the edge and proximity to tourism infrastructure, resulting in a decline, across half of the park area, from 13 to 23% in occupancy and from 19 to 35% in detectability (values averaged among species). These negative effects should be even stronger on smaller protected areas, which are the majority in highly altered hotspots. Re-establishing and properly managing buffer zones and restricting tourism to localized areas are essential to ensure the effectiveness of protected areas for biodiversity conservation.     

Negative effects of tourism in a Brazilian Atlantic forest National Park

Specific impacts and benefits of nature tourism on species, ecosystem and socio-economic aspects have to be addressed in detail. This study compared diurnal medium-large vertebrate richness and abundance in a visited (VT) and a non-visited trail (NVT) in the mountain forest of Serra dos Órgãos National Park (SONP), a priority area for nature conservation in the Atlantic Forest hotspot. Results suggest that richness and abundance of medium-large mammals and birds are significantly reduced in VT, however sample effort was insufficient for further analysis. In the absence of adequate data, protected area managers have to guarantee infrastructure and control, but first, limit access by visitors, to small sized groups and low in frequency, guaranteeing large refuges for wildlife, and effective contributions for nature conservation with real socio-economic benefits at local and regional scales. The Brazilian government is investing in tourism in National Parks, including SONP, but there are no directives to monitor and manage potential negative impacts. Researchers and managers need to work together to couple this economic activity with environmental conservation in SONP and other protected areas in Brazil.     

Trenches like fences make good neighbours: Revenue sharing around Kibale National Park,Uganda

Revenue sharing aims to balance the disadvantages people encounter living next to protected areas while fostering improved conservation behaviours. In Uganda, 20% of protected area entrance fees are shared with local governments to benefit communities adjacent to national parks. The process to distribute funds and implement projects was investigated by interviewing Uganda Wildlife Authority wardens, local government and village residents around Kibale National Park, Uganda. The perceived benefit of revenue sharing by officials and local communities was collected through interviews and a household survey, while the influence of the program on conservation objectives was assessed by measuring illegal resource extraction from the national park adjacent to study villages. It was found that the program is evolving into an effective mechanism for sharing benefits, but that better project management and increased accounting transparency could further improve the program. If the projects specifically dealt with the problem of crop raiding by park-protected animals, then villagers did benefit and lower levels of illegal activity were found inside the park. Generally household perceived benefit was low, however reduced in-park illegal activity was recorded where the village chairperson perceived higher benefit from the program, implying that the village leadership may be influencing the conservation behaviours within the community. Compared with other incentive options such as loss compensation, direct payment, and collaborative management, revenue sharing appears to be an effective and practical choice, given the limited funding available to the wildlife authority to benefit local communities while trying to improve conservation behaviours.     

Concentration of fecal cortisol metabolites in chamois in relation to tourist pressure in Tatra National Park (South Poland)

In protected areas, outdoor recreation, and nature-based tourism can act as potential stressors for wildlife. Given the growing demand for nature recreation, the consequences of high tourist visitation on wildlife need to be assessed in order to avoid incompatibilities between public use and species protection goals. The Tatra National Park (Poland), in the Carpathian Mountains, is a unique alpine ecosystem visited by three million tourists per year. It hosts the only native population of an endemic subspecies of chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra tatrica). We investigated the effects of tourist disturbance, the number of visitors, and the season on the concentration of fecal cortisol metabolites (FCM) in Tatra chamois in 2009. FCM levels of chamois were significantly higher and showed higher variation at high tourist disturbance (mean?±?SD, 46.2?±?31.53 ng/g, n?=?56) than at low disturbance sites (mean?±?SD, 17.2?±?8.05 ng/g, n?=?38). Stress levels increased with the number of visitors and therefore showed a peak in summer, coinciding with the highest number of visitation to the national park. A large portion of chamois habitat in Tatra National Park is within the area of influence of the touristic trail network. The temporal or permanent creation of areas free of disturbance in protected areas should be considered, especially in the periods of high tourist visitation. This study highlights the need to monitor the effects of tourist activities on wildlife and to implement new policies in the management of protected areas.     

Should conservation of biodiversity involve private land? A Q methodological study in Poland to assess stakeholders’ attitude

Biodiversity conservation is gradually shifting its dependency on public protected areas to take a more holistic ecosystem and landscape approach that includes private lands in addition to public lands. However, effective practice of biodiversity conservation on private land also depends on landowners’ attitude and their willingness to participate and cooperate. This study focuses on Poland where conservation on private land is a relatively new concept but it is slowly gaining recognition, especially after its accession into the European Union. It investigates and classifies the diverse attitudes among stakeholder groups in Poland toward biodiversity conservation on private land that are part of protected areas. Four primary stakeholder groups were considered: conservation and park authorities, local administrative officials, local conservation based NGOs and private landowners. The study was conducted across three sites that represented three different forms of protected areas in Poland: a national park, a landscape park and a Natura 2000 site. Q methodology, a research method from psychology and other social sciences, was used to classify human subjectivity in stakeholders’ attitude in a more systematic manner. The analysis yielded three predominant factors which highlighted the diversity in attitudes among the stakeholder groups based on their knowledge, concerns and experience in the subject. Additionally, it underlined the common recognition among all stakeholder groups for better policy support, stronger collaboration among stakeholder and more financial or compensatory support for landowners to make private land conservation more feasible. Understanding the differences in attitudes will help bridge the gap between conservation priority and conservation opportunity—a current challenge in the field of biodiversity conservation.     

北京市自然保护地生态效益及其影响因素

自然保护地是生物多样性丰富区域,发挥着水源涵养、防风固沙等重要的生态效益。北京市共5类79处自然保护地,是首都重要生态屏障,但自然因素和人为干扰对自然保护地生态效益具有重要影响。本文核算了北京自然保护地的5种典型的生态效益,使用单因素方差分析比较了不同类型自然保护地生态效益的差异性,并基于冗余分析法（RDA）探究了2种自然因素（年均气温和年降水量）和4种人为因素（人口密度、建设用地比例、耕地比例和道路密度）对生态效益的影响。结果表明：1）北京自然保护地总体生态效益：北京自然保护地生境质量高,生境质量指数均值高达0.88;其它4项可价值化的生态效益中,水源涵养价值最大,固碳价值最低。2）各类自然保护地之间生态效益比较：除生境质量外,其它4个生态效益的总效益,自然保护地和森林公园显著高于其它3类自然保护地;湿地公园的生境质量显著低于其它4类保护地,而这4类保护地之间生境质量并无显著差异;从水源涵养的生态效益来看,风景名胜区和地质公园显著低于其它3类自然保护地。3）人为干扰因素（影响水平为38.92%）对生态效益的影响程度远高于自然因素（影响水平为16.63%）;防风固沙、水土保持和固碳效益主要受人为干扰影响,而生境质量同时受到自然因素和人为因素的影响,水源涵养则主要受到自然因素的影响。4）基于冗余分析,北京自然保护地可分为3个类群：水源涵养型、高质量栖息地型、其它生态效益型（包括防风固沙、水土保持和固碳）。本研究可为服务于北京保护地管理,提升北京自然保护地的生态效益。