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RE: Do wildlife tourism actually make people want to conserve nature? A new study suggest that it does!
This reminds of a brief conversation regarding tourists paying to help baby sea turtles in Mexico, the other day. The thing that a lot of people seem to leave out of when examining the ecotourist industry is that the main effect they have isn't necessarily converting the tourists to environmentalism, or even maximizing their direct benefit to the animals, so much as converting the local economy from one that exploits the animals themselves (i.e. hunting, fishing, circus performance, farm labor, etc.) to one that exploits the tourists' interest in the animals. (Here's a link to a really great video by Chris Haddfield's son on a similar situation involving the few remmaining wild elephants of Cambodia.)
That's a very good point, @ribbitingscience! I agree that this is one of the most important factors when it comes to wildlife tourism, and I'm sure it has helped preserve many different species. I remember reading about something similar for the turtles that hatched, where previously the local people would collect the eggs to eat, but now they could collect the eggs and trade them to a conservation group for food.
Precisely. Now, I don't know if this distinction is still recognized outside of the U.S. (even here the public seems to be unaware of the origins of the two) but the terms "environmentalist" and "conservationist" originally signified very different approaches to protecting the environment. Environmentalists believed in the preservation of nature in a completely natural state (exemplified by nature preserves) while conservationists believed in finding a balance in the sustainable use of nature (i.e. national parks and sustainable logging).
Personally, I come down on the conservationist side. Looking at the movement to save the Amazon rainforest, for example, you see the massive amount of attention paid by the public to the environmentalists' message did in fact result in a quite dramatic drop in the amount of tree coverage lost every year. With the economic downturn a few years back, the deforestation spiked 29% in 2016 alone. The reason being that most of the deforestation results from subsistence farming, which, despite being illegal, not only continues to spread but means that deforestation spikes correlate with slumps in the economy pretty well. The Brazilian government is reporting that deforestation is down for 2017 but that once again correlates with economic growth. Ultimately, the fate of the forest is tied to fixing the economic incentives and it just doesn't seem like the Brazilian government has done enough to transition the rural populations to a sustainable economy, instead relying on an underfunded legal initiative and so the chain continues forest>susbistence farm>land is depleted>cattle ranch>more land is cleared for farming>bought by larger cattle ranch>more land is cleared to unite the ranch lands. Focusing on tying the economy to environmental sustainability just seems to be the only viable long term in any circumstance.
I have never heard of the distinction between "environmentalist" and "conservationist" before, so at least it is not really used where I live. But it makes sense, and I suppose it is good to have different words, since these groups will have very different goals.
I completely agree. I can't really blame any poor countries for making bad decisions, because it's not like they really have a choice, because they do need some income to run their country.