Call Of The Wild

By Robin Knight

Deep in the Peruvian jungle in Manu National Park, an area half the size of Switzerland and reputedly home to more species of animals and plants than any other region of the world, the Matsiguenka tribe is gambling with its future. After centuries of dependence on hunting, gathering and small-scale farming, the isolated native community of 300 people has entered the tourist business. Last year the tribe opened a $120,000 ecolodge, built from rain-forest materials in traditional bamboo-stick and thatched-roof style. The lodge sleeps 24 people in four huts equipped with some amenities like bathrooms and solar-powered electricity. Cost: around $40 per person a night.

Guided and trained by GTZ, Germany's technical-aid agency, and INRENA, Peru's natural-resources institute, the Matsiguenkas hope to profit from tourism without destroying their own fragile way of life. Contact between tourists and themselves is kept to a minimum; photography is curbed; and tour-group access is limited to certain locations and times of year. The operation is run by a small group of Matsiguenkas, some technical advisers from GTZ and a hired administrator who collects payments. Profits go entirely to the Matsiguenkas to be used as they choose. So far, that has been mostly for medicines, farming tools, food and clothing.

Thousands of miles away in Africa, retired industrialist Noel de Villiers is aiming to set up a contiguous chain of cross-border ecotourism parks and nature reserves linking protected areas from Cairo to the Cape of Good Hope. Known as the Open Africa Initiative and endorsed by former South African President Nelson Mandela, the project hopes to bring local communities directly into the global tourist market, but it's still largely a dream. The goal is for tourism income from the parks to be plowed back into community development. "What we're saying is that it's about time that Africa turned conservation into an industry for Africans," says De Villiers. "This is something with which Africa can rejuvenate itself."

Suddenly ecotourism is the new global orthodoxy--a panacea to save threatened environments, address poverty and salve the conscience of well-heeled travelers, as well as satisfy a growing thirst for closer contact with nature. Groups such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, Earthwatch and Discovery Initiatives now share the jungle and savannah with more conventional operators. Major travel companies, hotels and airlines have jumped on the bandwagon with scores of environmentally friendly initiatives. "Consumers are currently very sensitive to the environment, and you've got to take that into account," says Jacques Maillot, CEO of Nouvelles Frontieres, France's largest tour operator. "If they want a green label for tours, we'll do it."

Most developing countries aggressively sell ecotourism, while few foreign-aid programs are complete without an ecotourism element. Two years ago, Brazil unveiled a $200 million program to develop ecotourism in the Amazon region. A project to build a visitors center, upgrade trails and construct canopy walkways has saved Ghana's Kakum rain forest from logging and other depredations. The park now employs 2,000 local people and attracts 40,000 tourists a year. Receipts from about 1,600 visitors each day are keeping afloat the Xcaret ecopark in Yucatan, Mexico--and also funding the 50 scientists who work there. Off Zanzibar, the island of Chumbe is preserving its local coral reefs and fish species with tourist income.

Africa, in fact, is awash with ecotourist ventures. In Zimbabwe a partnership has blossomed between the government and local communities to conserve the natural environment and manage wildlife resources as a way to attract tourist dollars. In South Africa the Conservation Corp., set up in 1991, has grown into Africa's largest ecotourism group, with 2,500 employees and $40 million in capitalization.

Ecotourism does not always produce such benign results. In Ladakh, a remote Himalayan region in northern India, rural communities are overrun each summer by trekkers and their hungry ponies, which are destroying the limited vegetation. In Kenya's famed Masai Mara Reserve, overcrowding has become "a nightmare," says Simeon Kanani of Nairobi's Technical and Study Tours. In the mid-1990s the local county council earned $1 million a month for schools and hospitals from gate receipts, but at a price. "If you have 20 to 30 four-wheel drives in the park, is that ecotourism?" asks Kanani.

Another question is how much ecotourists are truly willing to pay to keep the environment unspoiled. The government of the Seychelles has backed away from the $100 environmental fee it proposed to levy on each traveler this year to fund preservation efforts such as protecting the Vallee de Mai, a unique palm forest. In a recent study, 80% of Germans said an unspoiled environment was important to them, but only 40% were prepared to pay even $1 extra a day to help protect the environment of their holiday destination.

For strict environmentalists, ecotourism may be "a widely abused term which doesn't mean much anymore," in the words of Richard Leakey, director of Kenya's Wildlife Service. Certainly, having Masai Mara guides using two-way radios to speed the search for lions hardly seems in the spirit of noninvasive touring. But for all that, most critics concede that ecotourism is less invasive than forestry, mining and other forms of development. As Luis Roman, a Peruvian anthropologist working with the Matsiguenkas, observes, "To be successful with a venture like this, you need planning to make sure you don't overload the environmental resources or unleash negative cultural changes. It's risky, but we are managing it with great care."

--With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town, Jane Holligan/ Lima, Simon Robinson/Nairobi, Regine Wosnitza/Berlin and Nicholas Le Quesne/Paris

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town, Jane Holligan/Lima, Simon Robinson/Nairobi, Regine Wosnitza/Berlin and Nicholas Le Quesne/Paris