Essay On Ecotourism

Ecotourism is defined as “responsible travel to natural area that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education” by The International Ecotourism Society. Multitudes of areas around the world participate in ecotourism due to either their rare or unusual natural ecosystems. These ecotourism reserves are meant to conserve fragile environmental areas and teach the tourists about and how to protect the specific environments. But very few of these eco lodges or reserves are living up to the standards of conserving and educating. One example of a failure of the defined meaning of ecotourism is the Rio Quijos Eco-lodge in the Oriente region of Ecuador. The Rio Quijos Eco-lodge does not protect biodiversity of the resident environment as well as it needs to be protected to have an actual positive effect on the area. Eco-lodges are meant to be designed to conserve areas of land from possible environmental degradation generally caused by humans. The Rio Quijos conserves over 90 acres of land in a fragile area in Ecuador. But, people walk, raft, bike, fish and many other activities all through the Rio Quijos

But, after looking through the activity list provided by the Rio Quijos Eco Lodge website, there appears to be a lack of any type of possible education of the environment. Even if there is a tour guide that accompanies a group of people, there is nothing stated that shows the tour guide is there for any reason other than not allowing the group to get lost. Many activities look like they are just for people to go out in an exotic environment and do as they please. From the outside the Rio Quijos appears to be only for the money and just using the world eco lodge to attract tourists instead of trying to protect biodiversity in the