(Taken by me!) I’ll include a handful of my pictures from Tanzania to draw you into this post. Ecotourism is only viable when the infrastructure is stable, communities see the returned value in conservation for tourism, and if the environment is suitable for tourists. The two most significant threats to ecotourism are… read more
Economic
US Foreign Assistance and Ecotourism
The United States supports wildlife conservation and the development of ecotourism in foreign countries primarily through monetary aid. Unfortunately, data that dis-aggregates ecotourism revenue from tourism revenue is not routinely collected. Thus, analysts encounter difficulty when attempting to quantify US monetary support of the ecotourism industry. Nonetheless, ecotourism is a… read more
Tanzanian travel
Over Spring Break, two other students and I traveled to Arusha, Tanzania to conduct some first person interviews for our ecotourism research (and relax as much as possible, it was Spring Break!). It was a big trip for me, since I had never been out of the country before. This… read more
Can tourism promote sustainable development and protect global wildlife?
How much is an elephant worth? Nothing, the entrance fee to the zoo, or the cost of a safari? How much are you willing to pay for save a rhino? And how much are we, as a society, willing to pay to save endangered species? Those questions have different answers;… read more
The future of oil exploration and governance in the DRC
Virunga National Park is the oldest national park in Africa and is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Located in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the park borders Uganda and Rwanda. Virunga is rich in wildlife and fauna, having over 706 bird, 196 mammal, and 2,000 plant species. Although… read more
Loopholes in China’s Domestic Ivory Market
At the end of February of this year, China announced a one-year moratorium on ivory imports, stating that it will not be issuing import permits during this time. This move did little to appease the international conservation movement, which is more concerned with China’s domestic ivory market and circumvention of… read more
Boat-to-Plate: Tracing Your Fish Like Never Before
Two months ago, President Barack Obama announced an ambitious plan to combat illegal fishing that will monitor the industry like never before. Ocean advocates hope that these presidential recommendations will be the first step towards a sustained effort to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing by the United States. The… read more
Traffic sucks! (this time I don’t mean the rush-hour kind)
Wildlife trafficking is (and almost always has been) a huge problem in the world. Wildlife trade is the legal sale/transfer of wildlife and wildlife products, but trafficking is illegal — it involves endangered species, banned practices, or unsustainable take of wildlife. TRAFFIC (Wildlife trade monitoring network) is an organization that… read more
‘Death to Poachers!’ and Why Animal-Lovers Rage
In my previous post, Shoot-to-Kill Policy: Injustice in the Name of Conservation, I argued that militaristic shoot-to-kill (S2K) policies are likely ineffective in curbing poaching in the long term. Worse yet, through the guise of wildlife conservation, regimes use S2K’s military ethos to justify arbitrary and excessive violence on human… read more
A look to a gloomy 2015
2014 was a gloomy year for several iconic species. The Southern White Rhino was particularly hit hard, with 1,100+ killed in South Africa alone. As South Africa is home to 90% of the world’s rhino population (which currently stands less than 30,000 for all species of rhino), these numbers are… read more