? For example, the world’s biggest
conservation organisation, the WWF (cited in Goeldner et al., 2000: 556), define
ecotourism as ‘tourism to protect natural areas, as a means of economic gain
through natural resource preservation . . . ’ and The International Ecotourism
Society propose ‘[p]urposeful travel to natural areas to understand the culture
and natural history of the environment, taking care not to alter the integrity of the
ecosystem, while producing economic opportunities to make the conservation of
natural resources beneficial to local people’ (ibid.). USAID support projects that
claim to integrate conservation and development activities in many Third World
countries. These, they claim, provide alternatives to encroaching into protected
areas to hunt, log and farm. Furthermore, ‘a new group of stakeholders with a
vested interest in protecting parks’ is created. It is clearly important for them to
offer benefits to host communities, as ‘potential local resistance to setting aside
forest and fishing areas for conservation can often be softened by employment
and income producing opportunities ecotourism can generate’ (USAID, 1996: 1)