Blogging About Critters Since 2007

Friday, May 29, 2009

Uganda Benefits from Mountain Gorilla Survival

Uganda is seeing a growth in tourism dollars from visits to see its mountain gorillas. This is very important. The tourism revenue creates an incentive for Uganda to protect the endangered species at the same time that it contributes to human welfare.

This is a kind of symbiotic relationship that only benefits both members of the relationship. Lets hope it continues to flourish. There are only about 700 mountain gorillas left in the world.

1 comment:

Andrew said...

Ana,

This is one of the key benefits of ecotourism, both from a perspective of environmental management and from a perspective of animal welfare.

Tourism operators have an incentive to undertake whatever steps which they reasonably can in order to protect natural beauty of the environment as well as the viability of rare and endangered species.

To the extent that these operators have any political sway (and to the extent that government coffers benefit from any tax revenues associated with tourism dollars) then this tips the political balance away from more destructive industries and toward those industries which have an incentive to protect flora and fauna.

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