Results tagged “Destination Watch” from Intelligent Travel Blog

Much to the consternation of tiger enthusiasts, reverence for these once-mythical beasts seems to be at an all-time low. The BBC reports that one of India's fabled tiger parks, Panna National Park in Madhya Pradesh, has admitted that its Royal Bengal tiger population is now believed to be zero. The main culprit, according to an investigative probe? Poaching.

This saddens me, particularly, as barely three years ago I came within several feet of one of these most majestic of Panna's endagered residents (image, above). Though it was a short encounter (we, the tourists atop elephants in the bush, were limited to a few minutes of viewing and photographing, so as not to upset the shy animal), it remains my favorite recollection from India. Going on tiger safaris is certainly iconic and popular, but there is a specific disclaimer given to most tours: Tiger sightings are increasingly rare and are by no means guaranteed. With the knowledge that finding one of Panna's then-healthy population of 24 tigers in the park's 210-square-mile area was a textbook needle-in-haystack situation, I accepted this experience as one to hold in awe. And I was lucky to be able to do so. It now grieves me to think that experiences such as mine are on the extinction path.

Molly Feltner is traveling through Africa, and shares how one group found a sustainable solution to help the impoverished residents who live alongside Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park.

In Rwanda, conservationists have discovered that you can't protect species like mountain gorillas without also looking after the people who live around their habitat. And in the area around the gorillas' home, Volcanoes National Park, where there are nearly 600 people per square kilometer, the potential for human-wildlife conflict is particularly great. I learned about challenges and some of the possible solutions from former Volcanoes National Park Tourism Warden, Edwin Sabuhoro, whom I met while traveling in Rwanda. As it turns out, cultural tourism is a big part of the answer.

In 2004, Sabuhoro rescued a baby mountain gorilla from poachers who had killed several adult gorillas and where attempting to sell the baby on the black market. The baby survived but the two young poachers received life sentences in prison for their crime. After their conviction, Sabuhoro visited with the poachers' parents to find out why they did it. One of the boy's father said "If you were starving and couldn't feed your family, wouldn't you do something desperate to survive?"

Sabuhoro did further investigation into the lives of the nearly 500,000 poverty-stricken people who live around the park and found that the residents suffered as a result of their proximity to it--animals like Cape buffalo and elephants ate their crops and trampled their dwellings, and access to fresh water, firewood, and other resources was limited because it was illegal to harvest them from the park. The locals resented the park, and saw little reason to conserve it, so wildlife poaching and illegal harvesting of trees and other plants was rife.

For some it's the last place on earth, the seventh check mark on their continent list. But the growing influx of tourists to Antarctica has U.S. leaders thinking about the consequences, and on Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the Arctic Council and the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting about the need to limit visitors to the region.

"The changes underway in the Arctic will have long-term impacts on our economic future, our energy future, and indeed, again, the future of our planet," she said. "So it is crucial that we work together." In her statement, she proposed new international standards that would limit the number of tourist vessel landings and cited the need to have cooperation in restricting potentially hazardous discharges from ships. She also focused on setting safety standards for tour operations; citing some of the recent cruise ship accidents, she made a recommendation for new requirements for lifeboats on tourist ships "to make sure they can keep passengers alive until rescue comes."

The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators has reported that over 46,000 tourists visited Antarctica in the 2007-2008 tour season -- which is about four times the number of visitors as during the 2000-2001 season. What do you think? What standards would you like to see in place to protect the Arctic?

Read More: In the April National Geographic magazine, Bruce Barcott wrote a feature article about Svalbard, Norway's pristine Arctic archipelago, with photos by Paul Nicklen.

[CNN, DotEarth]
Photo: Dave Walsh via the Intelligent Travel Flickr pool