Ecotourism and sustainability
Maggie:
3-30-01
I had to wait for
the bus to come at noon, and ended up watching the hummingbirds swarm
the feeders near the tables.... I sat there
watching the birds and listening to the tourists compliment the soft
drinks.
Eventually some terrible
birdwatchers took the bench beside
me.... The
father was really pleased with his sons. Then they started talking
about the birds calling them by numbers as found in the Common Costa
Rica Bird Guide they
carried. "There's a 24-7 page 7. Is that
a 23-3?" Then a North American looking tour guide came over and
started telling them all the names in numbers. "Here's a 23-9. Add that
to your list."
The father gloated
to the side to the young American tour guide, "Isn't it great? They're
just kids." The funny thing is that when two yellow
song birds came to the hummingbird feeder, the boys got all confused.
"These hummingbirds aren't in the book. I cannot find any
yellow hummingbirds." Eventually the guide explained that they
were 40-24, not hummingbirds at all. "We should have known
since they weren't hovering."
Anna:
In the Monteverde area,
the pluses and minuses of ecotourism were
painfully obvious. On the one hand, tourism brought in foreign
dollars that kept the standard of living in the area quite high and
provided jobs that didn't destroy the local environment. On the
other hand, this same influx of capital often drives land prices out of
the reach of the common man --- we learned that Monteverde acreages
were significantly more expensive than those at home in central
Appalachia. If I couldn't afford to settle in Monteverde, could
local Ticos?
And humanity was still
impacting the forest, even if the trees weren't
being cut down in droves to be replaced with banana trees (for export
to the U.S., of course.) Escaped house plants dotted the forest
floor --- Wandering Jew (Tradescantia
zebrina), an
African Impatiens, and Polkadot Plant (Hypoestyes
phyllostachya)
were the most striking. It became clear to me that wherever we
go, we leave footprints behind us.
Although
I believe that anything is better than central Appalachia's current
core industry --- mountaintop removal coal-mining --- I wonder whether
ecotourism is, in fact, the answer. Will tour guides come from
afar with the tourists, relegating the uneducated Appalachian to fast
food server and taxi driver? Or is there a way to lift up
Appalachia's culture and ingenuity while still protecting the mountains
we call home?
Our microbusiness path is one way to make a living
in an economically impoverished location.
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If people are going to be tourists we might as well be respectful in so being, and if people are going to market areas for tourism, there are more intentional ways to do so.
I really look down on the mentality that checks off birds from a list before stopping to appreciate the animal.
Ecotourism is a topic I'm really interested in because I feel like it could be one of the saving graces for Appalachia. But I'd hate to see our area become a tourist trap --- Mark tells me not to tell people how cheap you can get land around here, because he doesn't want it filling up!
Lately, I've been feeling instead like our area would benefit most from a new industry of internet tourism. That's the way I think of our chicken waterer business --- we market our product to the wide world, then spend our cash in the local economy. So we get the best of both worlds --- our forests don't get eaten up with subdivisions, but we don't have to sit around in poverty forever either.
I like the thought of eco-internet marketing. Especially if it is not a big corporation, but small and smart like you folks.
Perhaps next generation folks (not the origional craftspeople) might benefit and help their communities and elders if they connected the elders to the internet.
I know a local record salesman who might benefit from something like that. Other businesses like instrument makers and several of Berea College's crafts come to mind. I do not know if they are connected to the interenet yet.