WILDLIFE TOURISM

Wildlife Tourism & environmental impacts

Wildlife Tourism & environmental impacts

Introduction

Wildlife tourism is described as the balance between the economic and environmental factors. It is already known that economic activities impact the environmental factors. This case is evident in the area of tourism where environment is utilized as a resource. Tourist attraction anywhere depends on a pleasant atmosphere of any destination. Negative environmental setting shall affect tourism negatively. Wildlife tourism is one which is developed in a manner that it remains practical and feasible in the long run and does not affect the environment so that other activities can be successfully developed. The following paper identifies issues that small islands like Malta and Jamaica have to face when it comes to tourism (Brown 2001, p67).

In these states, degradation of the environment is a pivotal issue. It is an argumentative paper that takes corrective measures for arriving solutions to environmental degradation and identifies the benefits of economic development. The main concern for this research is to look for the importance of ecotourism in providing the better means for the local people to improve their social position. It is provided that this research requires understanding the importance of preserving the culture, tradition and environment of a country and importance of these factors in attracting the tourists and as a result providing better opportunities to these local people to expand their business. It identifies the role of ecotourism in the development of a country's economy. This paper will discuss role of tourism and the problems of tourism facing now. It will further discuss what tourism is and the reasons of why Wildlife tourism is chosen today and what are its impacts on environment.

Background

If we consider the history of tourism development, humans have travelled since the beginning of time when ancient people used to move from one place to another. The purposes of travel were trade, religious obligations, economic benefits, war, migration, and many others. According to Theobald, in the Roman period, wealthy aristocrats and high government officials also travelled for pleasure (Butler, 2003, p56). In this way, the origin of tourism is really very old. Stronza estimates that the history of modern travel and tourism is about a century old and that by now humans have to travel to most corners of the planet (Butler, 2009, p45) and even beyond the planet, known as space tourism.

Tourism has emerged as a gigantic industry which contributes an estimated 3 billion US dollars in annual revenue and about 10 percent of all employment (Hall, 2009, p120). Furthermore, due to the rapid process of globalization and with the help of new technologies in different sectors, the figures will definitely increase in the future. According to The International Eco-tourism Society (Hall, 2000, p7) and World Tourism Organization, by 2010 tourism will have increased to more than 1 billion international arrivals per year and is projected to increase further to 1,6 billion by 2020 (Howitt, 2001, p24)

Tourism has become the largest business sector in the world ...