Playing [Tasmanian] Devil's Advocate

Encouraging tourism through World Heritage Sites is like planting kudzu and Miracle Grow in your backyard herb garden: it’s a sure path to smothering the “good stuff.” Just as the kudzu vine will effortlessly suffocate your most robust basil or thyme sprouts, heavy tourism through fragile ecosystems can reduce natural oases to wastelands. This lucrative business is called ecotourism, and it besmirches natural ecosystems by cheering on clumsy tourists as they tromp brazenly through delicate environments. Tourists are notorious. Tourists abide by their own rules. Tourists do things like wander off designated paths, feed bears Nutter Butters, and then chuck that Nutter Butter wrapper into a pond, where it might eventually asphyxiate an endangered fish—destructive things.

Or so they say.

A new draft management plan for the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area would argue otherwise. The plan includes huge development opportunities for the Tasmanian sustainable tourism industry, which would, according to TWWHA, not only turn a profit that could be used to foster environmental protection, but also educate its visitors on the importance of environmental preservation, and perhaps create a generation of conservationists in doing so. The TWWHA believes this vision can be attained by the practice of “interpretation,” in which specialized guides educate visitors on the natural and cultural resources surrounding them. Preliminary research by R.B. Powell and S.H. Ham published in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism has found that the practice of interpretation significantly encouraged pro-environmental attitudes and intentions to support conservation. The TWWHA has called upon this research to support its new draft management plan, which calls for increased ecotourism through Tasmania’s World Heritage Sites. To play [Tasmanian] devil’s advocate, it’s easy to call a bluff on this research. First, it’s sponsored by the Journal of Sustainable Tourism (read: bias). Next, the follow-up actions of the participants were never measured—and isn’t that what truly matters in protecting Tasmania’s forests? Not the actions we say we will take, but the actions we actually do take.

I’ll admit that I am a bit skeptical of the idea that bolstering ecotourism is the world’s answer to protecting the last untouched areas of our earth. However, that’s not to say I don’t think it can help. When integrated into a larger plan of action—one that includes conservation legislation, the management and protection of sanctuaries, and the enforcement of restricted areas—sustainable tourism just may be the path to Paradise Gained.

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/wilderness-lost-as-tasmania-opens-world-heritage-area-for-new-growth/story-e6frgczx-1227185171221?nk=bf3e4e7d8adbcf3d97ad80319f2ec4f7

-Jory Huelskamp