Author: Lucrecia Aguilar
This is the second article from our four-part series titled Ecotourism.
Conservation and capitalism often butt heads. As societies strive for development, conservation concerns may lose out to commercial demands. Some activities, like clear-cutting forests for mining, clearly harm the environment. But when it comes to wildlife tourism, even conservationists are split. Does tourism in nature reserves support conservation or undermine it?
CWS Scientists Dr. K. Ullas Karanth and Dr. Krithi K. Karanth examine this question within the Indian context in an article for Economic & Political Weekly. According to them, the debate regarding tourism in tiger sanctuaries raged hotter than ever after the Supreme Court’s interim order to ban such activities. Proponents of tourism claim that a total ban on wildlife tourism will cause tiger extinction, as tiger conservation requires public support and oversight garnered by tourism. The authors point out a few flaws in this argument. First, the interim order does not constitute a total ban; wildlife tourism continues as usual in tiger reserves with buffer zones and all other wildlife sanctuaries. Second, tiger tourism is not tiger conservation. Because spotting tigers requires open habitats and habituated animals, tiger tourism only occurs in a few famous reserves, leaving most tiger habitat void of its “protection.” Plus, in the 1970s, tiger populations recovered in India not because of tourism, but rather public support, government action, and ecological nationalism.
Opponents to tourism praise the court order, contending that tourism poses the greatest threat to tiger conservation, and allows rich elites to take land from local residents. Though tigers face far greater threats than tourism, the current model for tiger tourism must change to reduce environmental disturbances, advance local economies, and remain accessible to non-affluent people. Yet neither of the two options proposed by the anti-tourism party – namely, banning or nationalising tourism – seems particularly feasible.
Long-term, both conservation and tourism benefit from protecting wildlife. Thus, as legislators nationwide turn against conservation, Karanth and Karanth suggest a new model for tiger tourism that would benefit conservation. This Tiger Habitat Expansion Model (THEM) would utilise tourism to expand tiger habitats onto private agricultural lands bordering reserves. While private enterprises could use private lands for luxury tourism, public nature reserves could retain affordable tourism options. By acquiring a more profitable alternative to farming, landowners could engage with tourism and conservation in a mutually beneficial way.
Though the authors recognise that implementing such a model would prove immensely difficult in India, they also indicate that cultural tolerance for wildlife and demographic shifts away from agriculture would help THEM succeed. It is time for the tourism industry to think beyond short-term profits and contribute to the wildlife from which it benefits.
Original Article: A Tiger in the Drawing Room: Can Luxury Tourism Benefit Wildlife? – Dr. K. Ullas Karanth and Dr. Krithi K. Karanth – Economic and Political Weekly, 2012
You can access the original research article Here.
You can access the Kannada translation Here.
