Author: Lucrecia Aguilar
This is the third article in our four-part series titled Ecotourism.
Tigers are immensely popular tourist attractions, and the number of people visiting Tiger Reserves has drastically risen in recent years. In this research article, CWS scientists explore trends in tiger tourism in India over a decade and offer recommendations to ensure that tourism benefits rather than harms tiger conservation efforts.
Wildlife-related tourism has grown quickly in India due to the nation’s rich natural heritage and expanding disposable incomes. This presents a dilemma: though such tourism can generate economic and conservation benefits, it can also harm local biodiversity and communities if not properly enacted. Yet very few examinations of the rapidly-expanding wildlife tourism sector have been conducted.
To help fill this gap, researchers Krithi K. Karanth, Shivangi Jain, and Dincy Mariyam explored trends in India’s wildlife tourism with a particular focus on tiger-centric tourism. Though tiger reserves make up only 49 of India’s more than 600 protected areas, these reserves hosted nearly one third of all wildlife tourists from 2014 to 2015.
They found that the average number of tourists visiting wildlife reserves more than doubled in the decade between 2005 and 2015. However, this increase was not evenly distributed among all reserves. Though well over one million people visited Rajiv Gandhi National Park in Andhra Pradesh between 2014 and 2015, many wildlife sanctuaries saw no visitors at all. Some reserves even experienced decreases in visitation over time.
Wildlife reserves also varied substantially in their accessibility, both physical and financial. In analysing the distances from reserves to urban centres, the researchers found a huge range, with reserves as close as 1.5 kilometres or as far as 819 kilometres from cities. Reserves also differed in how much they charged for entrance. In general, tiger reserves imposed higher gate fees than others and foreign tourists paid more than domestic tourists.
Given these trends in India’s wildlife tourism industry, the researchers offered some cautions and suggestions. Proper management must be implemented to minimise the negative impacts of increased tourism traffic and infrastructure. As domestic tourists make up the vast majority of wildlife tourists in India, wildlife tourism can help garner support for conservation among the Indian public. However, care must be taken to ensure that resentment does not build in local communities due to prohibitive gate fees or minimal economic benefits. Because tiger reserves attract a higher proportion of visitors, revenue-sharing systems could help ensure that even unvisited reserves receive funds for conservation efforts. Finally, the researchers urge state and national governments to keep organised records of wildlife tourism in order to analyse long-term trends in the future.
Original Article: Emerging Trends in Wildlife and Tiger Tourism in India – Krithi K. Karanth, Shivangi Jain, Dincy Mariyam – Nature Tourism, 2017
You can access the original article here.
You can access the Kannada translation here.
