Tourism

Tourism is a pretty big deal.  International Tourism alone accounts for almost $1,000,000,000,000.00 (big number.  I added the completely unnecessary cents to make it even more exaggerated).

And in Parks, they’re a lot of times considered the reason for exisitence, and their needs guide a lot of Park management.  As I said before, the Parks in Queensland near Mackay spend most of the time and budget dealing with tourists and managing their impact.  In Kakadu, I had a lot of trouble getting an interview with the rangers, because it’s the high-tourist season, and everyone was apparently busy with tourists.

But in this post, I’m more concerned with the role that tourists play in shaping Park policy directly, as opposed to indirectly.  E.g., on the Reef, the quickest way for the managers to get anything done was for tourist companies to complain about the infrastructure, which because it’s worth so much money (even to the very poor Park Services) that it gets results quickly.

And so, for a while, I’ve been toying with the idea that tourists can be a very effective means of change in Parks, because of their importance to park officials.  Now I’m not so sure.  In Kakadu, there’s something like 90% approval of the Park from tourists.  And in Litchfield, visitor surveys show that about 95% of the annual 280,000 visitors come only to swim in the pools.  As one ranger put it, if the toilets are clean, the roads flat, and the campsites not crowded, the tourists are fine.  Which leads me to believe that maybe tourists aren’t the best ones to help shape policy.  Because they don’t really know what’s going on.

This is not entirely their fault.   A lot of it depends on the interpretive skills of the Park Service, but there are limits.  Kind of the same deal with the joint-management issue, I think tourists receive a very simple version of the Park which prohibits them from ever really understanding what’s going on, what the issues are, etc.  For example, take an endangered species of bird.  A tourist rarely sees much wildlife in a Park (Kakadu is 22,000 sq km.  that’s huge.), and if one species dies, if ten die, it’s not very likely that a tourist will notice.  That’s not to say that it’s not important to have those birds, or whatever is going on, but there has to be a way to communicate the importance and the complexity of the Parks mission beyond just signs that say “biodiversity is important. Kakadu has 1000 birds.  We are trying to protect them”.  Which obviously, is an exaggeration, but I think the point is the same.  Because, at some point, you need more than just grandiose statements that communicate little actual information.

But, to be honest, this whole post seems to be exactly that – a grandiose statement that contains a lot of generalities and few details. It’s designed to stir the heart, but fails to deliver any meaningful way of actually getting results.  So I’m just as bad.  Oh well. I need some mentos.