Ecotourism - upload.wikimedia....

Biodiversity and ecotourism in developing countries (source: Gossling, 1999)
Hard reality
• In terms of tourism benefits:
developing countries – 20-40% of the total receipts
Entrance fees amount to 0.01%–1% of the total travel costs.
• In 1988 as much as 4–22% of these revenues were brought in by nature tourism
• In case of Nepal major portion of the tourism receipt should come form natural areas.
Useful devil
• Many of the eco-tourists destinations are extremely sensitive to environmental impacts from
human use.
• The presence of people is seen to have an impact on the behavior of wildlife such as affecting
reproductive success, feeding and social behaviors.
• Tour boats are often used in iYucatan, Mexico have resulted in a decreased feeding time and
increased alert behavior of flamingos.
• Visitations to Megallanic penguins nesting sites are popular but result in changes in the
penguin‟s behavior in both adults and chicks. causing lower hatching rates of eggs,
increased abandonment of nests, and higher mortality rates .
• When in the presence of tourists, animals abandon their nesting and feeding sites.
• Habituation of the gorillas is fundamental to ecotourism so that they may be safely observed by
tourists also may have loss of gorilla in poaching due to the losing the instinct to flee from
poachers or soldiers. Losing their survival skills places these animals at risk for extinction.
• One-homed Rhinoceros and sambar are becoming habituated to tourist activity in high tourist
use areas.
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