Nature Tourism and the Environment Book of Abstracts

Abstract

1. A warm welcome to all, and sincere thanks to our Sponsors. 2. The time is ripe to improve Australian policies on nature tourism, and the people with the influence and information to do it are here. 3. There are two megatrends. The adventure tourism sector has become a subsidiary of the clothing industry; and the economic significance of tourism is being overtaken by the effects of amenity migration on real estate values. 4. International trends in nature tourism emphasize ecological integrity, restricted minimal-impact public recreation, and increased public funding in parks; and increased use of public forests and private land for conservation, recreation and commercial nature tourism. I propose similar approaches in Australia. Current Australian policy development for tourism in parks risks repeating mistakes made in North America decades ago and now being rectified. 5. The quest for parks to take on private partners risks a political firesale of public conservation assets to private commercial interests. I propose a set of draft policy principles for tourism in protected areas, for debate at this conference. 6. Individual user fees are a politically popular but economically inefficient way to fund public conservation and recreation. If parks adopted commercial models from the airline, insurance, oil or diamond industries, tourism permit fees would be far higher. 7. Australian policy and funding for scientific research on ecological impacts of tourism and recreation in fragile environments lags decades behind international counterparts: individual research is of world class, but except for the Reef and Rainforest CRC’s, broad institutional support is lacking. Improved funding through the CRC program is needed to support relevant scientific research for the rest of Australia.