WAC Ecotourism

Have you ever seen a National park and thought wow! This helps us so much! Well, it may surprise you to know that ecotourism is not actually as amazing as it sounds. Though it does help that it makes these areas where wildlife can exist, humans are very destructive creatures who when they visit the park; will litter, trample the wildlife that is there, and erode the landscape by walking on it a picking up things so much so that that area slowly withers away.

From article one I got: With that many people around animals and natural landscapes you get trash and hurt animals. It also hurts the earth because people walk off path, step on plants and small organisms and if near a river, the ground might wither away into the river and making the park overall worse. But there is hope because there are laws and regulations preventing people from doing all of these things but sadly, not many people follow them. From article two I got: There is trash being put on the grounds and that is polluting the national parks. And that makes nature less beautiful for those who don’t pollute and just want to enjoy nature and worse for the animals who live there. Also animals might come by and think it is food and eat it then get sick and die.

From article three I got: It is dangerous for the animals and people when people are stupid with animals. (Taking pictures, feeding them, etc) Sometimes you have to punish the bears to make them be afraid of humans and stay clear of them because if bears are too comfortable with humans, they will follow people for food or go in the road and not be scared of the car horns. From article four I got: People like to take pieces of rock and plants, and that leads to erosion and that is not a good thing. People also like to step off the path and onto the forest, which leads to trail erosion and makes that park not look as nice. People like to harass wildlife and that disrupts the wildlife and is dangerous for them and us. People could be loud and rude to other guests and wildlife and might unleash their pets that will go into the brush and disrupt wildlife and trample plants. Also sometimes people leave fires going while camping, and that starts huge wildfires. From article five I got: People will go and disrupt the underwater reef wildlife by grabbing the corals (therefore possibly killing it) and move sea urchins out of the way with tongs. Even though there is money going to animals, there are still hardly any there. The business is less about saving the animals and more about getting as much money as possible. The people working at the reef lie about how safe it is for the people and animals. They drop anchors into the choral and drag it, destroying the fragile ecosystem.

Some might say that ecotourism is helping national parks. Their reasoning is that it helps because it raises money to help preserve these areas of wildlife. There are also rangers to prevent people from being dumb and hurting the land. Another one of their arguments might be that people get to see the landscape and that inspires people to help nature and donate money to keep these places going and protecting wildlife or that There are rules prohibiting these actions such as feeding animals and taking selfies with them. There is a way to make the bears not like humans. But the reason that this is not convincing enough is because it might help that these areas exist now but, when people go there, they ruin the habitats of these animals by killing coral or by putting bears and other animals in danger.

People go to these places that are meant to help animals but end it just hurting them. They let the animals eat trash, they destroy their habitat by walking where they shouldn't and picking things up that shouldn't have been picked up, and they kill animals like newts because they think it's funny.

Eco tourism is bad because people go into these habitats and destroy them and make life worse for the animals that live there. We kill animals and harass them in their habitats. We destroy their habitats. So now that you know why these parks are bad, do you still think that they are "America's best idea"?