Birdwatching "not environmentally friendly" (1 Viewer)

[Argon55]

An interesting observation, but I can't say I agree. Sometimes by travelling to the other side of the world to see birds you can strongly promote conservation in the region. If it can be shown that an individual can make more money by showing people birds than by chopping down the forest and grazing cattle, conservation of the area is more likely. It can also give jobs to locals both as guides and in other tourism related areas (hotels, food, etc.)
While a lot of this obviously depends on how you spend your vacation and where you choose to stay etc., I don't think that putting an end to travel would necessarily help save the planet.
Just my two cents (I'm getting my Master's in birding eco-tourism and sustainability though so if I felt any other way I'd have a bit of a dillema!)

Cheers,
Benji

Interesting observation and even more interesting to do the carbon calculation. Until somebody does, it'll just remain a hypothesis. Possibly, if enough people came in on a single flight (highest efficiency) then the extra money might possibly reduce some enviranmental damage but it is likely to go into the pockets of local people rather than to the large companies involved in logging (and therefore have little effect on their activities).

But tourism in its own right causes massive environmental degredation (unrelated directly to CO2) and the more tourists you have (see above) then the worse the degredation becomes.

I might be wrong but so far your arguemnt doesn't convince

 

[Argon55]

I'm not going to feel guilty about driving my small hybrid for my favorite recreation activity when I see the huge number of people who drive their RVs and SUVs to visit Disney World.

Who is trying to make you feel guilty? If you think what you're doing is wrong, then don't do it or modify it is some way. It's your life. Doesn't matter if others are worse than you......though I think its great you drive a hybrid.

 

[kristoffer]

the discussion should be about eating meat, not driving cars. The meatindustry emitts far more co2.

 

[liverpool_bob]

the discussion should be about eating meat, not driving cars. The meatindustry emitts far more co2.

This is a good point, we should kill all animals immediately.

 

[Jos Stratford]

Interesting observation and even more interesting to do the carbon calculation. Until somebody does, it'll just remain a hypothesis.

....


I might be wrong but so far your arguemnt doesn't convince

It's not a hypothesis, it's a fact that flying tourists do play an important role in preserving the world's most important environmental locations. It is cloud nine land to believe all the vast national parks in Africa, Asia and etc, etc would survive if the tourist pound, dollar and euro didn't help preserve them. Most of these countries do not have the luxury of resources to view conservation in anything else than economic terms. No tourists paying big bucks, no national parks of value.


This argument has been well argued in past threads on BF, someone may wish to dig it out, but I for one would not wish to live on a planet that is a nice cool low-carbon environment if the path to achieving that had been the total destruction of everything on that planet in order to get there.

 

[Monahawk]

the discussion should be about eating meat, not driving cars. The meatindustry emitts far more co2.

Good point about the meat industry. As we all know vast tracts of land the world over are being turned over for farming and ranching,destroying forests, hedgerows,wetlands,etc. Cattle and horses and there are far too many of these ceatures, expel an awful lot of CO2. The motor and aviation industries are at least trying to clean up their acts, or so they claim.
Perhaps my tongue in cheek comment about having a horse to go birding instead of a car is not so tongue in cheek after all.
With this thread we are in danger of losing touch with its original intention or debate. Lets not make this an anti meat eater [I'm omnivorous] or anti farming argument. There are other sites to debate those issues.

 

[kristoffer]

Good point about the meat industry. As we all know vast tracts of land the world over are being turned over for farming and ranching,destroying forests, hedgerows,wetlands,etc. Cattle and horses and there are far too many of these ceatures, expel an awful lot of CO2. The motor and aviation industries are at least trying to clean up their acts, or so they claim.
Perhaps my tongue in cheek comment about having a horse to go birding instead of a car is not so tongue in cheek after all.
With this thread we are in danger of losing touch with its original intention or debate. Lets not make this an anti meat eater [I'm omnivorous] or anti farming argument. There are other sites to debate those issues.

The thing is that eating meat is kinda taboo. It is easy to critize peoples driving habits, but not eating habits. The meat industry emitts over 20% of the total co2 released every year, and that makes it a lot bigger bad guy then car driving. So my point is that if you avoid meat once a week, twice a week or always, you have by far compensated for your driving, and you can keep up your twitching. Good deal huh? And also, 80% of all grain growed worldwide is used for the meat industry and all this grain only produces roughly 17% of all food in the world. A gigant waste, and we have to consider it a part of the old country side living, not citylife, to eat meat.

 

[Matt Prince]

Kristoffer, I think peoples attitude to meat is changing slowly, more from health concerns than environmental ones.

Jos - agree wholeheartedly about not wanting to live in a perfect, but sterile world, some of the ideas of using huge vats of carbon sink liquid to try and control carbon balance scare the **** out of me. Won't be any birds there!

I still think the real method of controlling human impacts is controlling human numbers - now there is a taboo for you. Population control... Will come eventually, but probably too late.

 

[Monahawk]

Kristoffer, I think peoples attitude to meat is changing slowly, more from health concerns than environmental ones.

Jos - agree wholeheartedly about not wanting to live in a perfect, but sterile world, some of the ideas of using huge vats of carbon sink liquid to try and control carbon balance scare the **** out of me. Won't be any birds there!

I still think the real method of controlling human impacts is controlling human numbers - now there is a taboo for you. Population control... Will come eventually, but probably too late.

Didn't the Messiah Sir David Attenborough raise a few eyebrows recently about the issue of human control? [ He didn't mean another world war].

 

[colonelboris]

Population control would be the key - even if we got our power comsumption down by 20%, it really wouldn't be long before we'd bred another 20% more people. And, as mentioned above, war just wouldn't do it, not to mention all the petrol that goes into tanks and fighter aircraft...

 

[kristoffer]

yes, we are too many. Western lifestyle support about 1 billion humans. Unfortunately china is always attacked for their birthcontrol but it is really the right idea. If we want a planet to live on.

 

[Argon55]

It's not a hypothesis, it's a fact that flying tourists do play an important role in preserving the world's most important environmental locations. It is cloud nine land to believe all the vast national parks in Africa, Asia and etc, etc would survive if the tourist pound, dollar and euro didn't help preserve them. Most of these countries do not have the luxury of resources to view conservation in anything else than economic terms. No tourists paying big bucks, no national parks of value.


This argument has been well argued in past threads on BF, someone may wish to dig it out, but I for one would not wish to live on a planet that is a nice cool low-carbon environment if the path to achieving that had been the total destruction of everything on that planet in order to get there.

The history of eco-tourism and degradation of the environment so far is that relatively small (compared to the wider environment) national parks have been established which attract tourists. However, vast swathes of primal forest have been destroyed around these parks. And that is the point. Compared to degredation of the wider environment, benefits derived from national parks and eco-tourism are a drop in the ocean. Furthermore, national and international logging companies are generally much more politically influential than the environment lobby. If they weren't we wouldnt be in such a bad position now! Consequently, in the countries that matter (those with large tropical forest carbon sinks), logging usually, though not always, wins out. The only way to influence logging is through international politics. How is the Amazon to be saved? Eco-tourism or international agreements on logging and Soya bean faming? And that doesn't take into account degradation caused by tourism itself. Look at whats happened in the Gallapagos islands or on the Barrier reef. But I suppose a national park is better than the whole thing being logged but in global CO2 terms its neither here nor there.

So many people seem to be in utter denial about the consequences of global warming. Most accept its happening and "something must be done". Yet when the things to be done affects themselves there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth or complete denial and subversion of arguements. You can see it in here clearly. Challenge the idea that flying about to see birds might be a bad thing and there's much huffing and puffing.

Examples of this kind of thinking here are that the original article had some flaws in it so therefore the whole thing was rubbish. Thats all right then. We can forget about the whole uncomfortable thing. Or even worse: "I for one would not wish to live on a planet that is a nice cool low-carbon environment if the path to achieving that had been the total destruction of everything on that planet in order to get there."

Thats such a complete travesty of the concerns expressed by scientists and environmentalists that its almost funny. I and other colleagues had always been under the impression that trying to achieve a low carbon environment will save destruction of environment.

We have two choices....we can muddle on as we are and fail or reduce carbon emmissions and succeed. If we do the first then there's a good chance we'll trigger a mass extinction event (the biggest extinction event in the history of the world was at the end of the Permian period where 95% of marine species and 70% of terrestial species were lost). The estimated rate of loss of species currently, already exceeds that in the Permian. Billions of humans will die well before that because of rising sea levels, wars over land and resources, starvation and disease.

If we do the second, then all our lives will have to change dramatically. Capitalism based on consumption will stop and travelling for anything other than essential purposes will probably stop unless essential. Personally I think we'll all eventually be happier but will take huge adjustments to get from here to there.

 

[jc122463]

I agree that "benefits derived from national parks and eco-tourism are a drop in the ocean", however, they are still a drop. I don't think anyone would argue that eco-tourism is the ultimate solution to solving the environmental crisis. Tourism has definitely had a negative impact in many areas; thus the need to find methods of sustainable tourism (the term "eco-tourism" is obviously used way too often to promote ventures that are not at all ecologically friendly).
A pragmatic solution is necessary. It is impossible to tell the entire world to stop travelling. The environmental problem is multi-faceted and the solution needs to be as well. Lowering CO2 emission alone won't save the environment. Decreasing population alone won't save the environment. Not eating meat alone won't save the environment. The key is to find a balance that does work. The key isn't to cut everything out of our lives, but to consider what we do and try to make it more sustainable. The buildings we live in, the electricity we use, the food we eat, etc, all have an effect on our environment and can't feasibly be cut out as a whole. However, we can try our hardest to make our lives more sustainable. Maybe that's cutting back on how much meat we eat, not leaving our computers on all day, biking to work, or, when we travel, trying to stay and eat in places that promote sustainability and conservation.
It's obviously not a simple question, but I don't think that an extreme view either way will help to actually solve the current problem.

 

[Matt Prince]

Erm, wouldn't decreasing the human population to zero, solve the problem?

A bit extreme, I agree..

 

[Jos Stratford]

The history of eco-tourism and degradation of the environment so far is that relatively small (compared to the wider environment) national parks have been established which attract tourists.

Simply not true.

In Uganda alone, national parks cover 33,000 square kilometres, or about 14 % of the land area. In Kenya it is something near 60,000 square kilometres, 10% of the land area. Same in Tanzania, same in most of Southern Africa, etc, etc. Move continent, in Costa Rica it is near 25 % of the land area, etc, etc. This is repeated in countries across the World.

So not only are vast areas of land preserved, not relatively small, but in almost all cases these are absolutely the most important remaining areas. And like it or not, many of these survive both as a physical entity and, as importantly, a respected entity by the local community, primarily as they generate substantial sources of income.

Conservation is, in essence, a Western luxury - when a country and its people are struggling to survive, what Government could stand up and declare national parks and then, when there would be absolutely no benefit to the country or local population, expect them to be respected. The result would be continual encroachment and poaching, the bringing of livestock onto the reserves, etc.

However, once tourists start to arrive, the whole equation changes - not only do they bring income to the country as a whole, but local communities benefit through both direct tourist input (employment/lodgings/souvenirs, etc) but also many governments now purposely divert a portion of entry fees to projects in the local community. Result, local community sees benefit and actively supports the conservation.

And in many countries it is true that 'flagship' national parks attract almost all tourists, so it can e argues the benefits do not filter out to other protected areas. Partly true, but in most states the national parks are administered by a single state body and resources generated at the flagship reserves supports conservation at reserves throughout the country, along with community-based projects.

No tourists, screwed World. No planes, no tourists. No planes, screwed World.

So many people seem to be in utter denial about the consequences of global warming.

... Yet when the things to be done affects themselves there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth or complete denial and subversion of arguements. You can see it in here clearly. Challenge the idea that flying about to see birds might be a bad thing and there's much huffing and puffing.

Simply wrong again. An alternative view is that carbonites are frequently so bloody obsessed with this one single issue that they are totally blinkered to anything that may challenge their limited thinking. You can see it in here clearly.

 

[Jos Stratford]

... the electricity we use, the food we eat, etc, all have an effect on our environment and can't feasibly be cut out as a whole...

I eat almost nothing

And don't use much electricity ...

In house 1, annual consumption is +/-1000 Kw per year
In house 2, I got an electricity bill for my house three months ago - I had somehow avoided the electric men for three years and was expecting some rather nasty bill. Three years of electricity came to ...erm, 85 Kw!!!

In both cases no additional energy used - ie no gas, oil, etc. Sometimes a bit of firewood when mega sub-zero


But, being right environmental scum, I do fly like there's no tomorrow!

Ha ha ha...

 

[James Blake]

I'm by no means an expert on this, but mainstream world population forecasts generally seem to have the human population peaking in 2050-75 at about 9.2 billion (currently 6.8 billion) and then more-or-less plateauing for a long while.

See for instance this UN report:
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf

If we can cope with 7 billion people we may be able to cope with 9 billion...if we're clever.

James

 

[Argon55]

Simply wrong again. An alternative view is that carbonites are frequently so bloody obsessed with this one single issue that they are totally blinkered to anything that may challenge their limited thinking. You can see it in here clearly.[/QUOTE]

More huffing and puffing I think.

I for one would not wish to live on a planet that is a nice cool low-carbon environment if the path to achieving that had been the total destruction of everything on that planet in order to get there.[/QUOTE]

Can you seriously justify, in joined up thinking, how a low carbon world would result in massive environmental destruction? Please explain the thread of your logic.

You seem to misunderstand my point. But it's important to explode the myth that tourism to nature reserves is unequivocally a good thing. It is true that eco-tourism can sometimes benefit locals and the environment to some extent. But there are clear disadvantages too, particularly in vulnerable environments. Studies show that most of the income from tourism eventually goes back to the richer countries anyway rather than remaining in the host countries and increases the dependency of the south on the developed world. And it is not uncommon for indigenous peoples to be displaced from their land. Maasai and their cattle have been expelled from areas of the Maasai Mara reserve due to pressure from Safari companies. In the drought of 2007, this caused severe difficulties for the Maasai with children dying as an indirect result. In Kenya, poverty has increased and there areas where the increase is highest is around the national parks.

But my point is about CO2 emissions. How does getting on a plane result in reduced CO2 emissions?....unless of course as a consequence, massive areas of the planet are saved as nature reserves. And even then, they just maintain the status quo as far as carbon sinks are concerned....not increase them as is needed. You mention vast areas have been turned over to reserves. In an absolute sense thats true though rather subjective. However, I don't call 10 to 15% of land surface all that big when faced with the problem. Though it is of course better than chopping the trees down! CO2 concentrations need to be reduced, not maintained. It is essential to use international pressure to conserve what is left (to prevent it being logged). If this happens tourism will not be necessary though any reduction in tourism must be managed over time.

 

[Jos Stratford]

Can you seriously justify, in joined up thinking, how a low carbon world would result in massive environmental destruction? Please explain the thread of your logic. You seem to misunderstand my point.

I believe I did not misunderstand your point. Perhaps mine was not clear to you - a low carbon world in itself would destroy nothing, my point, and I feel perfectly valid, is that if the path to achieving a low carbon World itself leads to massive environmental destruction, then we have achieved little. And yes, despite your objections, I do believe many persons on the campaign to cut carbon are blinkered - many of these so-called environmentalists only see one objective - get carbon levels down, everything else is of secondary or no importance. 'Ah all ye green birders, cut flying, the World will be better place'. I disagree, in many cases it will not - it will be a far worse place if we lose the many environments that primarily owe their existance to tourism. Visit the Ruwenzori for one simple example; or ask yourself why landowners down the length of the Zambezi Valley came together to convert their extensive agricultural lands into vast reserves of one sort or another - wealthy incoming tourists played a larger role than a simple desire to see wild animals grazing by the river.

Unconnected with flying, the blinkered view their massive windturbine schemes as green, the flag happily flown by media and government in most cases too. In Britain perhaps, the negative impact of schemes is fought - we now have conservationists fighting 'environmentalists' - but more internationally, countries are being coated in windturbines - this is not green, this is carnage. Not only it is industrializing remaining wild areas, but on the scale that is being planned in many nations, the long-term impact on raptors, cranes and storks, etc, can only be guessed at. Visit the Rann of Kutch in the desertlands of western India ...superb place, flocks of Demoseille and Common Cranes by the thousand, Steppe Eagles by the dozen, sometimes hundred. Harriers in roosts numbering several thousand. Do not turn around however, behind you are turbines being constructed as far as the eye can see.

So how can a low carbon world result in massive environmental destruction? Simple, exactly in the way many people are trying to do it now.

But it's important to explode the myth that tourism to nature reserves is unequivocally a good thing.

I did not, and would not, say 'unequivocally'. What is, however, a far greater myth is that banning flights will save the World - that is simply cobblers.

It is true that eco-tourism can sometimes benefit locals and the environment to some extent.

Sometimes ...to some extent! I can only recommend you get on a plane and see more of the World!

But my point is about CO2 emissions. How does getting on a plane result in reduced CO2 emissions?.

Exactly what I said - your point is only about CO2 emissions, one issue.

It is essential to use international pressure to conserve what is left (to prevent it being logged). If this happens tourism will not be necessary though any reduction in tourism must be managed over time.

Yes, Lords from ye Lands of Power, we shall stop utilizing our lands, yes we shall not log our forests, nor kill its creatures, no Lord we will not encourage your tourists to visit us, and yes dear Lords of Power, we shall not seek to survive and feed our chidren, nor harbour desires to to raise our standards of living to levels even a fraction of yours.

 

[kristoffer]

the planet can only sustain 1 billion, not 7 or 10.

I'm by no means an expert on this, but mainstream world population forecasts generally seem to have the human population peaking in 2050-75 at about 9.2 billion (currently 6.8 billion) and then more-or-less plateauing for a long while.

See for instance this UN report:
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf

If we can cope with 7 billion people we may be able to cope with 9 billion...if we're clever.

James