[Fwd: ECO-TOURISM: Rural Dominicans Launch Ecotourism Enterprises]

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Rural Dominicans Launch Ecotourism Enterprises

By David Dudenhoefer
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2003. All Rights Reserved.

CACHOTE, Dominican Republic, May 21, 2003 (ENS) – The muffled song of a
Hispaniolan trogon wafted through dense foliage high in the Dominican
Republic’s Sierra de Baoruco as Maltiano Moreta focused his binoculars
on that rare bird. Moreta, president of the Ecological Society in the
nearby town of Paraiso, knows that the endemic trogon’s cloud forest
habitat has been greatly reduced. He is consequently trying to turn
Cachote’s cloud forest into a tourist attraction, so that local farmers
have an incentive to protect it.

Moreta, who has been visiting Cachote for years, explained that he grew
concerned about the steady destruction of the area’s forests, which
provide habitat for endemic birds such as the Hispaniolan parakeet,
parrot, trogon and the island’s three hummingbird species.

Watching birds in the Sierra de Baoruco (Photos courtesy D. Dudenhoefer)
http://ens-news.com/ens/pics28/dr1.jpg

He began talking to local farmers about ecotourism, and convinced one
family to turn 2,000 hectares (4,942 acres) of their land into a
community forest reserve. Moreta's organization obtained funding to help
Cachote residents create a basic tourism infrastructure, become better
prepared to accommodate visitors, and promote their area to outsiders
from the Global Environment Facility’s Small Grants Programme (SGP),
administered by the UN Development Programme.
“We have to find economic alternatives to take a little pressure off the
forest,” he said.

A number of Moreta’s compatriots are promoting similar enterprises as a
way of involving rural communities in conservation. Tourism has long
been the Dominican Republic’s biggest industry, with more than three
million foreigners arriving each year, but most of those people are
content to lounge on the island’s idyllic beaches.

In recent years, though, nature and adventure tourism have drawn a
growing number of visitors away from the surf and sand. The island's
biggest eco-attractions are the thousands of humpback whales that winter
in Samana Bay, but its forests hold an impressive array of plants and
animals, including 20 endemic bird species, nearly 200 endemic reptile
and amphibian species, and some 1,800 endemic plant species.

According to Bolivar Troncoso, who established the Dominican Tourism
Ministry’s Ecotourism Department, about half the people who visit the
country engage in some sort of nature tourism. He said the activity
could become a significant force for conservation in the island’s
interior, while benefiting some of the country’s poorest communities.

Troncoso pointed out that whereas most of the beach resorts are owned by
foreign companies, ecotourism has been developed almost exclusively by
Dominicans.

Crossing a bridge over a Dominican stream
http://ens-news.com/ens/pics28/dr2.jpg

“The number one problem has been a lack of incentives from the state,”
Troncoso said, explaining that the interest on bank loans is too high
for the low returns on ecotourism investments. He said the only hope for
poor communities like Cachote to get into tourism is international
assistance.

If Cachote’s residents are lucky, their ecotourism enterprise will be as
successful as the one in Los Calabazos, a community of 200 on the Yaque
River, in the country’s Cordillera Central. In 1998, the Mothers Club of
Los Calabazos received an SGP grant to build and equip a simple
restaurant, and several years later, the Canadian nongovernmental
organization Plan Nagua funded the construction of 10 rustic bungalows
there.

On weekends and holidays, those bungalows are often fill up with
visitors who hike on trails through the riparian forest and swim in the
Yaque’s refreshing waters. Those tourists spend about US$8 per room and
$2 to $4 per meal in the restaurant, and the profits are used by
community groups to help the town’s poorest families improve their homes
and cover medical costs.

According to Alberto Sanchez, the SGP’s national coordinator for the
Dominican Republic, ecotourism has improved both the community’s
standard of living and its relationship with the environment.

“The people have a new appreciation of the forest,” he said, explaining
that the town’s farmers have traditionally practiced slash-and-burn
agriculture. “The entire community has become the principal protector of
natural resources.”

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2003. All Rights Reserved.
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Received on Thu May 22 14:34:58 2003