Trampling Paradise

Environmental Health Perspectives, May, 2000 by David J. Tenenbaum

Tourism development and the visitation it occasions also contribute to habitat decline. In a 1997 survey of 44 U.S. national park superintendents titled Environmental Impacts of Tourism on U.S. National Parks, 37 parks reported vegetation problems related to tourism. Camping along streams in crowded parks causes trampling of stream banks and erosion into surface waters. Laura Loomis, director of the visitor use and experience program at the private National Parks Conservation Association, says the National Park Service has recently done a reasonably good job of moving campsites away from streams. The service has been less effective at dealing with damage due to new forms of recreation, she says. For example, "sand boarding" is a dry version of surfing done on the sands of the Great Sand Dunes National Monument in Colorado. Critics charge that the activity leads to erosion of the dunes and that regulations to protect the dunes are not being enforced. "They say it's only 10 people per year and that it's too expensive to send rangers out," says Loomis, "but that's the same head-in-the-sand attitude they took when snowmobiles were introduced into Yellowstone."

The effects of tourism development are perhaps most vividly evident in the Galapagos Islands, the volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean where Charles Darwin gathered data before propounding his theory of evolution. The Galapagos archipelago has long been a destination for tourists with an ecological or scientific bent, but the habitat is rapidly changing. The islands and its wildlife are threatened by an onslaught of tourists and a surge in population among the people who serve them. The islands' population has reached 20,000, causing problems with sewage, trash, and habitat destruction due to such introduced species as goats and pigs.

Animal Behavior and Biodiversity

It's not just geography that can be threatened by tourists. Animals may be affected by the presence of tourists as well. Much of the international concerns in this area originated in Kenya, where lions, cheetahs, elephants, and other wildlife at game parks are frequently surrounded by scores of tourist vans. A 1990 survey by J. S. Akama published in Progress in Tourism and Hospitality Research found that 80% of tourists in Kenya were disturbed by animal harassment, off-road driving, and vehicle congestion.

Visitors may also affect animals in the fragile rainforests, according to research in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin by biologist Stella de la Torre, formerly at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. After tracking howler monkeys at two locations, de la Torre found that noise from tourist boats was changing the way the monkeys used their habitat. "In the area with motorboats from 17 tour agencies, the monkeys seem to be retreating from the lake edge, where they would normally be spending most of their time," says University of Wisconsin researcher Charles Snowdon, who oversaw the research, which was published in the September 1999 issue of Neotropical Primates. In a companion study of the pygmy marmoset scheduled for publication in Biological Conservation, de la Torre found that the five-ounce primate stayed higher in the trees and interacted less in areas with more tourists. The pygmy marmosets at the heavily traveled site produced only 31% of their potential offspring, compared to 86% in areas with low tourist numbers.