An excited group of tourists at Yellowstone National Park surrounded a mother bear and her cubs as they took pictures earlier this month.
As Ecotourism Booms, Conservation Leader Says Global National Parks Need More Protection Now
07.08.2023 - 18:59 / forbes.com
Already valued at an estimated $185 billion, the worldwide ecotourism segment is expected to exceed $374 billion in global impact within the decade.
The number of travelers seeking out trips that engage with National Parks, Wildlife, Marine Reserves and Indigenous Territories has grown by nearly 18% since just last year, drastically increasing the number of visitors to places like Mana Pools National Park, Zimbabwe, Indonesia’s Komodo National Park, and Mirador National Park, Guatemala.
Together, National Parks in developing countries draw in tens of millions of tourists per year, but due to ineffective international funding for Park and Wildlife Protection, and in-country corruption, few National Parks receive the needed resources to protect their millions of acres of intact forests and wildlife habitats.
As the planet grapples with the consequences of massive deforestation, illegal logging, cattle ranching, illegal mining and wildlife poaching, these magnets for ecotourism are critical bastions for keystone species like tigers, elephants, jaguars, chimpanzees, orangutans and rhinoceros, and their intact forest ecosystems.
To help protect these vulnerable National Parks and Indigenous Territories in developing countries, non-profit organization Global Conservation works with national park authorities and indigenous leaders to deploy Global Park Defense and Community Protection, providing rangers and local community patrols with the systems, equipment and training they need to combat increasing threats from illegal loggers and wildlife poachers.
To learn more, we spoke with Global Conservation’s Executive Director Jeff Morgan, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has spent decades in the non-profit field working to protect the planet’s natural and cultural resources.
Forbes: Let’s first address the elephant in the room, the U.N.’s 30x30 goal. Is conserving 30% of the planet’s land and marine habitat by 2030 achievable in your opinion?
Morgan: It is a critical goal if we want to reduce climate change. But, in reality, if we don’t do a good job protecting the current 3% of lands already declared “protected,” especially in developing countries — with real funding, systems, equipment and training — I don’t see how 30x30 will be anything more than an empty slogan.
Forbes: What obstacles do national parks in developing countries face that you feel would surprise fans of U.S. national parks like Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon or Yosemite?
Morgan: U.S. and European national parks have incredible support from their governments, both national and state-level. In national parks where we work in Zimbabwe, Uganda, Guatemala and Indonesia, national parks can barely pay the salaries of the few rangers they have,
The website maxtravelz.com is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.
Top Autors
Popular Topics
skift.com
25.08.2023 / 13:31
Uganda Upgrades Airfields at National Parks to Increase Tourism
Travelers looking to visit several Ugandan national parks will soon have easier access to the popular tourist attractions. Uganda’s government recently announced that airfields at four national parks will be upgraded and equipped with immigration posts, making them better able to welcome international visitors.
nytimes.com
15.08.2023 / 10:51
You Can Take Your Dog to a National Park, but You’ll Both Need to Be Very, Very Good
Ely MacInnes and her husband, Tom, began traveling in the western United States with their 85-pound mutt, Alaska, in March 2020. Driving and living in an R.V., they visited White Sands and Petrified Forest National Parks in New Mexico and Arizona before heading to California, Oregon and Washington. They sometimes struggled to figure out where Alaska could and couldn’t roam, but often found that they could have wonderful experiences.
insider.com
05.08.2023 / 10:35
Photos show how drastically Montana's Glacier National Park has changed since the 1900s
In the century-plus since its inception in 1910, Glacier National Park in northwest Montana — the Crown of the Continent — has seen drastic changes.
nationalgeographic.com
27.07.2023 / 19:37
These are the 10 best U.S. national parks to see wildlife
The chance to spot a bear, bison, or bald eagle in the wild is one of the major reasons travelers visit the United States’ 63 national parks. You might assume that a megafauna mecca like Yellowstone National Park would offer the best odds of seeing multiple animals.
smartertravel.com
27.07.2023 / 18:26
Zion National Park: Our November National Park of the Month
Among its 232 square miles of mesas, canyons, and terraces lies the highlight of Zion National Park: the 16-mile-long, 2,500-foot-deep Zion Canyon, where the north fork of the Virgin River has been sluicing its way through red-and-ochre sandstone of Utah’s plateau for more than a million years.
smartertravel.com
27.07.2023 / 18:14
National Parks Pricing Going up for Summer 2018
When the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) proposed drastic hikes to admission fees last fall, the reaction was swift and negative. It seems the NPS heard what people will saying.
smartertravel.com
27.07.2023 / 18:02
The 5 Best National Park Live Webcams We’re Watching
Missing the great outdoors? Us too. While we’re spending more time planning our next national park vacation than we are being outside, we’re making the most of quarantine with these live cams of national parks.
travelandleisure.com
26.07.2023 / 20:25
A New National Monument Honoring Emmett Till Just Opened — What to Know and How to Visit
A new national monument has been established to honor Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley.
cntraveler.com
25.07.2023 / 14:03
Sailing Through Indonesia's Komodo National Park
Soon after the turn of the 20th century, rumors began making their way west that man-eating lizards, 10 feet long and weighing up to 350 pounds, with fearsome talons, chain mail scales, and serrated teeth dripping with venom, had been found living on a remote Indonesian island. The source of the reports was Lieutenant Jacques Karel Henri van Steyn van Hensbroek, a Dutch colonial officer, who revealed the existence of Varanus komodoensis, the world's largest extant reptile, in 1910. But it was a 1926 American Museum of Natural History expedition to capture live specimens, led by a flamboyant Vanderbilt scion named William Douglas Burden, that caused interest in the creature to explode in popular culture. Burden's gripping account, Dragon Lizards of Komodo, inspired his friend Merian C. Cooper to dream up the primordial Skull Island for his classic 1933 film, King Kong. Civilization was steaming forward, and yet, in that era, the map still seemed to hold places that hid ancient secrets.
matadornetwork.com
25.07.2023 / 10:48
10 of the Best Hotels Near Glacier National Park in 2023
Glacier National Park is one of the most gorgeous parks in the national park system. The sprawling park is in northern Montana and is home to some of the oldest glaciers in the US — not to mention wildlife like grizzly and brown bears, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, pumas, wolves, elk, moose, and more. The park has gorgeous day hikes running between half a mile or 20 miles, and some of the best backcountry backpacking in the US. You can even hike from the US into Waterton Lakes National Park, the attached national park just on the other side of the US-Canada border.
matadornetwork.com
25.07.2023 / 10:47
How To Visit Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park in Madagascar
Tsingy National Park (full name: The Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park) is a national park in Madagascar. The name “tsingy” comes from a Malagasy word meaning “walking on tiptoes,” which is an apt description of the landscape of the park. It is known for its unique karst formations, formed by rain that dissolved the soft limestone over time, creating sharp, rocky spires.