The Ecovision Concept

Written by Anthony Mills, April 1999

I believe that ecotourism is making an enormous contribution towards the goal of making conservation of natural habitats economically viable. It can, however, contribute even further by taking ecological research from the university archives and presenting it in an entertaining manner to ecotourists worldwide.

The business of ecotourism is largely dependent on location. If a particular area has magnificent views, beaches, forests, lakes or deserts, that is often enough to attract ecotourists and make the construction of a lodge or resort economically viable. A suitable location meets one of the ecotourists needs, that of getting away from it all. The second major need of the ecotourist is to learn about the natural ecology and it is here where improvements to service are always possible.

Whilst local guides may have exceptional knowledge of the local flora and fauna, this expertise should be incorporated into an overall ecological entertainment plan in order to maximise the entertainment potential of a particular area for ecotourists. Nature is a million and one shows happening all at once. These shows require narration and translation. The ecology of the ants of a particular area may, for example, have enough fascinating information to keep the average nature enthusiast enthralled for hours.

The script for such a guided walk requires thorough research. Each stopping point would be planned in advance. The information on ant behaviour, mating systems, food gathering techniques, fungus farming or defence mechanisms would be carefully allocated to a particular place on the walk that best fitted that particular piece of information. The information needs to be tailored to flow from one stop to the next, maintaining a logical theme and keeping the listeners on the edge of their seats or tree trunks. Between stops, the audience should be eagerly awaiting the next piece of information for which they would have been primed on the previous stop. A full ecological entertainment plan would encompass several ecological guided walks with different themes dependent on the nature of the area.

The ecological entertainment potential of any ecotourism area has two main sources of information:

  • local guides and nature enthusiasts; and
  • academic journals and reference books

It is usually the first source that is utilised by the ecotourism industry. Local guides are employed to entertain tourists with their knowledge of the area. The second source is a colossal amount of information that is often under-utilised. The ecological information of the flora and fauna of a particular region is often locked up in journals that are the domain of academic researchers and thus not generally easily accessible to the ecotourism industry. It is this divide that Ecovision Consulting strives to bridge, by researching the ecology of an area in academic sources and extracting that information which has entertainment value for the ecotourist.

The Ecovision Ecological Entertainment Plan thus involves the following steps:

Step 1: Research