INTRODUCTION
Ecotourism is generally considered to be a friendly alternative to
other economic uses of natural resources in nature reserves, such as
mining, hunting, farming, and the like. It is thought that only when
local people participate in and receive sufficient economic benefits
from it, then ecotourism can substitute at least partially for these unsustainable
uses of natural resources. Community participation, a Western
paradigm in natural resource management and utilization, is currently