To drivers heading west along Interstate 70 today, the Vail fairways' bright-green carpet marks the first sign of the valley's growing status as a golfing mecca. Nine 18-hole courses--housing developments bordering all but one--now pepper the arid valley with splotches of green. And with another six courses on the drawing board, the area will soon join the ranks of Palm Springs and south Florida as one of the places with the highest number of golf courses per capita.

So it's hardly surprising that Christina Brokaw looked askance at the Vail Golf Course managers who asked her two years ago to help the course become certified as an environmental sanctuary. To Brokaw, an environmental scientist at the nearby Vail Nature Center, the notion that a golf course might be worthy of recognition as a wildlife sanctuary seemed ridiculous. "The idea of golf courses as green spaces seemed like a joke," she recalls. "I didn't want anything to do with them."

Her reaction is hardly unique. Incensed by accounts of birds and fish being poisoned by pesticides from golf courses, environmentalists have long decried golfing's impacts. Seemingly devoid of biodiversity and awash in toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, courses have been blamed for everything from breast cancer among women golfers to endangering rare plants and animals. The animosity has only grown with the current boom in course construction and the real estate development that accompanies perhaps 60 percent of all new courses. Now opening at the rate of more than one per day (double that of 10 years ago), new courses have consumed more than half a million acres of the United States since 1987. In all, they occupy about 3,750 square miles--an area three times the size of Rhode Island.

Yet as stiffer environmental regulations and growing shortages restrict the supply of available land and water, the golf industry has begun to change its ways. A few developers are building courses on formerly degraded land, from California oilfields to Massachusetts gravel pits. Meanwhile, golf course superintendents, prompted by pesticide bans and an improved understanding of the health risks posed by chemicals, have increasingly switched to "integrated pest management"--a holistic maintenance philosophy that seeks to minimize chemical use. "There have been substantial environmental improvements over the past five years, particularly with new course construction," says Sharon Newsome, environmental program director for Physicians for Social Responsibility and a former National Wildlife Federation official who has scrutinized the golf industry since 1994.

But suspicions and stereotypes persist. Many who practice the sport see environmentalists as tree-hugging fanatics unwilling to base their opinions on true science. Golfers, in turn, are stereotyped as uncaring elitists fixated on manicured fairways, oblivious to the effects of such artificial conditions on local birds and other wildlife. And golf course workers have been vilified in movies like Caddy Shack, in which comedian Bill Murray shapes plastic explosives to resemble groundhogs and detonates them in a last-ditch attempt to rid his course of the resilient pests.

Golfers and environmentalists weren't always at odds. More than 70 years ago, the National Association of Audubon Societies published Golf Clubs as Bird Sanctuaries, an illustrated booklet that called attention to the symbiotic relationship between golfing and birds and extolled the virtue of making "every golf course a bird sanctuary."

"In those days there was far more cooperation between birders and golfers," says Maureen Hinkle, the National Audubon Society's director of agricultural policy. "Relatively simple ecological solutions were welcomed enthusiastically." Enticed by the fact that birds could help control pests (the booklet notes that each day a fledgling robin eats 14 feet of earthworms, whose castings are the bane of accurate putting), golf courses featured elaborate birdhouses, -baths, and feeding stations. Greenskeepers planted wild fruit trees and berry bushes to attract birds.

"But somehow that ideal got lost," says Michael Hurdzan, a Columbus, Ohio-based golf course architect and plant physiologist who is trying to bridge the gap between golf and the environment. "We took technology and made beautiful golf courses that weren't necessarily healthy."

The advent of chemical fertilizers shortly after World War II prompted golf course superintendents to use increasing amounts of the nitrogen-rich compounds. The potent chemicals acted like a paint job on an old car, transforming naturally flawed fairways into deep-green carpets almost overnight. At the same time, chemicals developed during the war, such as DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons, were widely deployed as pesticides.

By the early 1990s, studies done by the New York Attorney General's and by Stuart Cohen of Environmental Turf Services found that more pesticides were being used on golf courses than on many crops. (Cohen concluded, however, that golf course pesticide use accounted for 1 percent of all agricultural pesticide use in the United States.)

Unaware of the potential dangers, course workers often mixed the chemicals by hand in open containers, sometimes with disastrous results. In 1980, six months after Jeff Carlson and his wife moved in next to the course he managed on Cape Cod, he recalls, "she began losing her beautiful red hair." The doctor's diagnosis: heavy metal poisoning. "We'd been mixing the chemicals right next to the house, and I was handling the stuff without protective gear," he says. "We stopped using the fungicide, and her hair stopped falling out. From that point forward, I quit using those chemicals."

Amid increasing evidence of water and wildlife contamination, many of the chemicals were taken off the market. After the deaths of hundreds of brant geese on Long Island, New York, were linked to applications of the insecticide Diazinon on nearby golf courses, the product was prohibited for golf course use in 1990 (although it is still available at garden-supply stores.) Fish kills linked to pesticide use on south-Florida courses last year prompted Dade County officials to consider banning Nemacure, a pesticide used to kill microscopic, grass-destroying worms. And in the wake of a 1993 University of Iowa study that found unusually high cancer rates among golf course superintendents, a growing number have adopted integrated pest management and are employing a variety of measures to prevent water contamination.

Technology advances have helped, too. Many pesticide producers have developed less dangerous products, such as compounds that interfere with the pest's reproductive cycle rather than killing it outright. "If used properly, the pesticides on the market today are far less hazardous than those of a decade ago," says Cohen, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official who helped remove several pesticides from the market and who now conducts environmental-impact studies for golf course developers. In addition, new computerized irrigation and spraying systems linked to weather satellites help reduce overwatering and spread fertilizers and pesticides more sparingly. Genetically engineered turf grasses resist pests and endure drought.

In 1995, environmentalists and golf-industry leaders got together to air their differences at a Golf and the Environment conference in Pebble Beach, California. The confab produced a document--signed by more than 40 environmental and industry leaders--that established voluntary environmental guidelines for new and existing courses. Subsequent meetings led to a pilot program to monitor fertilizer, pesticide, and water use at 50 courses across the country.

Meanwhile, Ronald Dodson, president of Audubon International (a nonprofit organization not affiliated with the National Audubon Society), developed a program in which any golf course can apply to be an "Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary." Since 1994 about 150 courses have completed the six-phase certification process, which entails a complete cataloguing of plant and animal species, as well as a variety of steps to improve biodiversity and reduce pollution and waste. Some 2,000 courses are currently applying for certification.

Vail's golf course was certified last summer--thanks in part to Christine Brokaw, the environmental scientist, who was cajoled by friends into aiding the effort. She conducted a comprehensive survey of flora and fauna and helped course workers establish buffer zones of tall grasses and native plants between Vail's fairways and Gore Creek, in order to protect against fertilizer runoff and expand wildlife habitat. To enhance an acre and a half of wetlands, she planted native irises and water lilies, which had long since disappeared from the area. Meanwhile, course superintendent Ernie Bender installed a $50,000 washwater-recycling system. He switched from granular fertilizer to a soluble type that could be sprayed in microamounts and instituted an integrated-pest-management plan. He built boxes for bluebirds, bats, and owls and hung signs asking golfers to keep out of "environmentally sensitive zones."

Superintendents like Bender say it's in their interest to make their courses more environmentally friendly. "We're the ones most in danger of exposure to chemicals," Bender notes. "We're the ones whose jobs would be easier if we didn't have to mow every inch of grass. I'd love to mow the greens at three-sixteenths of an inch instead of an eighth," since longer grass requires less maintenance and thus fewer chemicals. "But if I did that, I'd probably end up working somewhere else."

When Philip A. Anderson became superintendent of the Old Westbury Golf & Country Club, on Long Island, New York in 1990, he took over a course bathed in $150,000 worth of chemical fertilizers and pesticides annually. "It was an intensive care unit," says Anderson. "The natural circle of life had been broken."

A staunch proponent of organic fertilizers, he set about building a composting operation and was soon using the leaf-based mixtures to renew nutrient-depleted soils. "But members would say, 'This golf course smells like a cow pasture,' " he recalls. And when brown spots temporarily appeared on several greens, "it didn't look like a pool table anymore, and members complained, and I almost lost my job." Fortunately, his efforts soon showed results. Today Old Westbury's fairways are as green as ever, despite the fact that its chemicals budget has dropped to less than $8,000 a year.

Anderson and others attribute golfers' obsession with perfect conditions in part to televised images from tournaments such as the Masters Tournament, held every April at Georgia's Augusta National Golf Club--watched by more than 42 million viewers. Augusta, built on the site of former nursery, is a horticultural heaven: Towering pines overlook ryegrass fairways meticulously mown from border to border; flowering dogwood, peach, and magnolia trees surround perfect greens shorn to Persian-carpet length; flowering tea olives, nandinas and camellias--some of the more than 350 plant varieties added by landscapers--are coaxed to peak bloom just in time for tournament week.

Augusta's fairways are cropped to .39 of an inch, and they require more fertilizers and pesticides than less manicured courses. Ponds are dyed with aquatic colorant, turning them a deep turquiose. "It's like Disneyland," says Anderson. "It's beautiful, but it's totally artificial, and it sets a standard that's totally unattainable for the average golf course." Indeed, just after the Masters fanfare recedes, the Augusta course closes for four months.

"It's the 'Augusta National Syndrome,' " says Roger Schiffman, editor of Golf Digest, the sport's largest-circulation magazine. "We've grown accustomed to these highly manicured conditions, but the game isn't meant to be that way." He notes the sport's origins in Scotland, where the landscape's natural imperfections and the vagaries of the weather still dictate play. "Golf began as a more rugged game, where the elements were more of a factor," he says. "We've got to educate golfers that brown can be beautiful, that you don't have to play in pristine conditions to have fun. People need to get out there and walk the courses and learn to appreciate the natural surroundings."

If the proliferation of golf carts is any indication, though, it's going to be a long learning curve. Although golfing purists and industry leaders decry them, golf carts have become as ubiquitous as Tiger Woods's Nike swoosh. And their toll on the landscape is no less apparent.

The Widow's Walk Golf Course in Scituate, Massachusetts, is a new facility that planted hybrid grasses that require less water and fertilizer. "This grass can resist disease and drought, but it can't handle all this cart traffic," says Carlson, who, as the course's superintendent, is experimenting with restricting cart traffic on some fairways. "We expect to show a dramatic difference in the amount of fertilizer used on those fairways," he says. "We won't have to put more than a pound of nitrogen per year on them. The others will probably require triple that amount."

What most frustrates Carlson is that most of the cart riders he sees are perfectly able to walk. "They're mostly guys from thirty-five to fifty," he notes. "The type with the big cigar, the high five when they make the birdie, the big pro [golf] bag . . ."

The growing legions of baby boomers taking up golf have swelled its ranks to more than 25 million, a 25 percent increase since the late 1980s. Meanwhile, new golf courses have sprouted like weeds. The total number of courses in the United States now stands at more than 16,000, and another 728 courses are scheduled for completion this year--a record. Their development is concentrated in California, Michigan, and Florida, which together account for about a fifth of all courses under construction. About 40 percent include real estate development, which can more than double the 150 acres typically required for an 18-hole golf course. In fact, many expansion critics point to accompanying development as the most intrusive aspect of a golf course. Because local government agencies often consider golf courses to be open space,"you end up with the worst type of land-use planning," says Mark Massara, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club who has fought against golf course expansion in California. "You get so-called open space that's full of housing subdivisions and all the urban sprawl that goes with them."

Yet golf courses do preserve open space, providing havens for wildlife that might otherwise be developed in more intrusive ways. "Golf courses can make good wildlife habitat," says Michael Hodge, a senior wildlife biologist with the Wildlife Habitat Council. "A lot of birdwatchers would agree that they're often sanctuaries for different species of birds. I know of many birdwatching clubs that frequent golf courses."

Courses can also be a way of reclaiming damaged lands that were devoid of animal life. Thanks to federal Superfund legislation, which stipulated grants for businesses that restore Superfund sites, courses such as the Old Works Golf Course, built on the once-desolate site of a copper smelter near Anaconda, Montana, have salvaged abused lands. (See the Good, the Bad and the Formerly Ugly sidebar."

The 120-acre Widow's Walk course occupies the site of an abandoned gravel pit, just a stone's throw for Scituate's garbage dump. A test bed for environmentally sound course construction, it contains more than 40 acres of wetlands. Narrow fairways, designed in part to conserve water, challenge even scratch golfers.

"We've spotted all sorts of warblers, American redstarts, northern water thrushes, indigo buntings, orchard orioles, and eight kinds of sandpipers here," says Clyde Gurney, a veteran birdwatcher who recently helped complete a bird count on the course for the Massachusetts Audubon Society and who has installed more than 50 birdhouses there. "It was just a pit before; nothing could live in there. Now it's thriving as it never has."

Such stories certainly give cause for hope. Yet for every reclamation project there are perhaps five courses built on private land--farm, woods or ranches that may have been prime wildlife habitat. "In most cases, what you've gained in even a well-managed golf course doesn't compensate for the habitat loss needed to build the course," says David Clapp, director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society's South Shore sanctuaries. Moreover, golf courses built on private land are subject to limited environmental regulation.

Audubon International's Dodson estimates that as many as half of all new golf course projects weren't required to undergo a thorough environmental-impact review. And while his group's certification program has become increasingly popular among golf courses eager to improve their image, it is entirely voluntary--a fact that irks suspicious environmentalists. Also, though program staffers review each application and suggest improvements, they don't necessarily visit the courses they certify. "You can buy a hundred-dollar membership and claim to adhere to the principles, but there's no real oversight," says Sierra Club's Massara. Dodson, however, argues that the purpose of his program is to educate golf course managers, not to regulate them. In fact, he blames the lack of governmental oversight for thwarting his efforts to promote improved stewardship. "A lot of people would like us to hammer on golf courses," he says. "But in most cases, the certified courses are doing more than the law requires. A lot of places we work, there are no environmental-impact reports required. It's tough to get them do more when the agency regulating them doesn't require it."

And although the Audubon International program has motivated some courses to improve their environmental practices, its carrot (versus stick) approach has prompted fewer than one percent of all U.S. courses to complete the certification process. As for the 80 percent that haven't even applied, "there need to be more financial incentives for courses to do better, and legal recourse if they don't," says Brokaw, the environmental scientist. "I'd like to think that education would do it, but I don't think it's enough. Vail deserved the certification. But just by looking at the paperwork, I can see how a less conscientious golf course would still be polluting significantly" after being certified.

And despite the improvements at Vail's golf course, Brokaw notes, trappers continue to remove beavers from Gore Creek. "The shame is that all the silt and runoff that comes from the mountains would normally get caught in the beaver ponds," she says. "Now people have to worry about water pollution from the silt."

Newsome of Physicians for Social Responsibility, who remains active in the Golf and the Environment project, says, "In the overall scheme of things, one golf course's environmental impacts seem small compared with the great world crises." But considering the golfing boom's impact on places like Vail Valley, it's an increasingly crucial issue.

"We'd be hard pressed to say that golf courses and the development that follows them has positively affected the environment here," says Bender, the Vail Golf Course superintendent. "If we want to control growth, that's a prime place to start. As a resident, I'd just as soon not have new golf courses built here."

Audubon: September, 1998

Guide to the Guides

Is Ecotourism a oxymoron? What you should know before you get really close to nature.

by Alex Markels

Call it animal magnetism, the almost universal human compulsion to commune with animals in their natural habitat. And the closer the better. "There is a set of inherited predispositions in people that draw them toward nature," says E. O. Wilson, the renowned Harvard University professor, naturalist and author. In his 1984 book "Biophilia" (literally "love of life"), Wilson posits a basic human need for interaction with animals. "We have an innate fascination for untrammeled wilderness and wild creatures, I believe, because the natural world has always provided the means to expand knowledge and increase our survival ability," he says.

Little wonder, then, that wildlife tourism is the fastest-growing sector of the travel industry, now accounting for about 10% of the multitrillion-dollar international tourism market. You can go to Africa to watch a cheetah move in for the kill, then drive close enough to see the blood dripping from its chin as it devours its prey. Off Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, you can swim with dolphins or rub shoulders with a humpback whale, gently caressing its smooth back as it floats by. In Borneo you can track orangutans through the rainforest, or feed an orphaned baby primate straight from a bottle.

Carefully managed, such interactions are mostly benign. They can even benefit the animals by channeling tourist dollars to conserve habitats and create economic incentives for locals to reduce hunting and poaching of rare species. For example, proceeds from an annual "Save the Tiger" tour to India and Nepal go to protect endangered Bengal tigers and their habitat. Development of tourism along the Scarlet Macaw Trail in Guatemala has helped thwart poachers from stealing the rare bird’s chicks. And gorilla watching tours to Uganda’s Bwindi National Park are helping protect the endangered primates.

"If it weren’t for tourism, mountain gorillas and their habitat wouldn’t exist today," says Craig Sholley, former director of the African Wildlife Foundation’s Mountain Gorilla Project in Rwanda who now directs conservation and education for nature tour outfitter International Expeditions. "In the best of all worlds, the habitat would be preserved without tourism. But that’s not rational in the world we live in. You’ve got to create an economic incentive to preserve … and tourism is it." Yet tourism is hardly a panacea. In Africa, safaris have caused veritable traffic jams in the Savannah --- scarring the landscape and interrupting animal behavior. Tourists flocking to Mexico’s monarch butterfly reserves kick up clouds of dust and cause trail erosion and water pollution. In the Galapagos Islands, increasing tourism has spurred Albatrosses to move their nesting sites away from tourist routes. Meanwhile, sea lions there have exhibited increasing aggression and nervousness around tourists. "People are loving it to death," says Mr. Sholley, whose Alabama-based company continues to offer trips to the Galapagos but limits the size of its voyages to 20-passenger boats. "We walk a tightrope between imposing on wildlife and achieving the close interactions that tourists expect."

With the future of literally thousands of rare species hanging in the balance, groups like the Ecotourism Society, a North Bennington, Vermont, non-profit group, and the National Audubon Society have pushed guides and tour operators to adopt ethical and environmental principles. A cross between Hippocrates’ (first do no harm) medical oath and Star Trek’s "prime directive" (do not interfere in alien cultures), the standards include two key components that are closely related: environmental conservation and sustaining the well-being of local people. "When local people are involved in an ecosystem as an industry, they become the best (environmental) protectors," notes Dr. Wilson.

This noble --- if elusive --- goal has led to a flowering of "responsible" tourism projects throughout the world, ranging from bare-bones "working vacations," where paying guests assist researchers in the field, to luxurious excursions captained by leading scientists and educators. Some of the most effective tours match experienced outfitters with environmental and educational groups. For instance, birdwatching tours to Panama cosponsored by Seattle-based Wildland Adventures and ANCON, Panama’s national conservation organization, not only help conserve rainforest habitat in eastern Panama's Darien jungle, they also help sustain indigenous cultures. The crucial link between trip participants and the places they visit, local guide Hernan Arauz employs indigenous people and their goods at every opportunity, and he takes pains to minimize impacts on local culture. Before visiting jungle inhabitants, he "impressed on us the type of behavior that was acceptable," recalls Steve Bender, a recent trip participant. And when it comes time to buy handicrafts, Mr. Arauz makes sure everyone in the village gets a chance to show their wares before tourists make their purchase. "You really get a sense that everyone has an equal chance to benefit," says Kurt Kutay, a former U.S. National Park Service planner and environmentalist who now runs Wildland. "Which goes a long way to minimize cultural conflicts."

An unofficial ambassador for the Darien rainforest, Mr. Arauz recently led President Ernesto Balladares of Panama on a tour of the region, and helped convince the government not to reopen gold mining operations there. "His tours have helped save that jungle," says Mr. Kutay.

Other regions have benefited from the building of environmentally sensitive "ecolodges," such as Costa Rica’s Lapa Rios retreat on the country’s Osa Peninsula. Tourist income from the five-acre compound (which was built without cutting a single live tree) has been used to acquire and protect more than 1,000 acres of lowland rainforests endangered by nearby resort development. In Kenya, the Galdessa Safari Ecolodge raises funds from visitors to conserve the Hunter’s hartebeest, Africa’s most endangered ungulate, and to help reintroduce the black rhinoceros to nearby Tsavo East National Park.

In another example, Zabalo, a small development built 10 years ago in the Ecuadorian rainforest, brought much needed tourists dollars to indigenous Cofan tribes whose rainforest environment and cultural heritage were severely threatened by oil exploration in the area. Tourism provides $500 annually to each member of the tribe, has helped prevent oil exploration on their land and prompted them to create a land-use system that restricts over-hunting. "It’s a prime example of the potential good ecotourism projects can do," says Ecotourism Society president Megan Epler Wood, who recently authored a book on Ecuadorian ecotourism that highlights Zabalo.

Yet over the past 15 year, the ecotravel industry has mushroomed from a small collection of concerned environmentalists into a hodgepodge of more than 1,000 companies, it’s become increasingly difficult to evaluate which program to choose. Trips boasting the "eco" label are now offered by everyone from environmental groups to adventure-travel outfitters to workaday travel agents seeking to cash in on the green-tourism boom. "I’d like to se (ecotourism) become ten or a hundred times more frequent in the most valuable habitats," says Dr. Wilson. "But it has to be developed as both a science and a management art, as well as a paying business. This is where government regulation and oversight by independent groups plays a defining role."

Unfortunately, there remains no objective, independent system for rating or monitoring the ecotourism industry. Which means travelers must take it upon themselves to scrutinize the operators, discern whether the trips they organize deserve the "eco" label, and choose accordingly. "You need to ask the operator a lot of questions," says Ms. Epler Wood, whose organization publishes lists of questions to ask outfitters on its website, such as "Does the ecotour monitor levels of visitation to fragile environments?" and "What training opportunities does the ecotour operator provide (its guides and workers)?"

To determine a trip’s educational merit, a perusal of the outfitter’s recommended reading list is helpful. "And if they don’t have one, that tells you a lot about the educational value of the program," says Margaret Carnright, who oversees the National Audubon Society’s travel programs.

And it's not just the tour company but the local guides that form the crucial link between travelers and the place they visit. A local guide can make or break not only the trip but the ecosystem itself. Yet the training for local guides can be rudimentary at best, and some wildlife experts say many are ill-equipped to manage delicate interactions with nature. "What’s needed is for guides to understand animal behavior," says Richard Estes, an behavioral ecologist and author of the Safari Companion: A Guide to Watching African Mammals. "But most don’t. They all know a lot about finding animals, but not about how to interact with them once they have." Such concerns have led some conservation organizations to sponsor guide training programs. As concerns that gray whales breeding in lagoons off Mexico’s Baja Peninsula might be impacted by overzealous guides, the RARE Center for Tropical Conservation’s Nature Guide Training Program stepped in to provide training for fishermen-cum-tour guides in communities near the gray whale habitat. But the solution requires more than educating guides on how to behave around wild animals. "We also need to educate tourists not to pressure guides to break the rules," says Brett Jenks, RARE’s director of ecotourism and development.

Ecotourists can also act as watchdogs. The South American Explorer’s Club allows members to review thousands of trip reports that evaluate individual guides and tours. "Members aren’t bashful about saying the guide didn’t know his stuff," explains club founder Don Montague, who is making the reports accessible via the club’s website.

Conservation groups also collect evaluations from past participants of trips they sponsor, and their choice of outfitters provides a useful screening mechanism. "We thoroughly scrutinize the outfitters before working with them," says Audubon’s Ms. Carnright. And if problems crop up on the trip, "you have us on your side as an advocate," she notes. For example, after water flooded one traveler’s cabin on an Audubon-sponsored voyage last year, the organization insisted the outfitter reimburse the traveler.

Yet even respected environmental groups can be duped by unscrupulous tour operators --- many U.S.-based operators and environmental groups subcontract their nature trips to local outfitters and guides --- or even by the research scientists they hire to lead tours and volunteer projects. After famed primate researcher Birute’ Galdikas was accused of poor research standards in her work with orangutans, Earthwatch Institute, which had sent visitors to work with Galdikas since 1984, cancelled trips to her Borneo facility. "Birute’s priorities switched from research to conversation, which took her away from the field site," says Blue Magruder, Earthwatch’s director of public affairs. "Given that, it made impossible to do valid research." Meanwhile, some tour operators continue to publicize and sell Galdikas-led visits to Borneo on their websites.

Many companies make protecting local cultures as important a goal as protecting the environment. Unfortunately, there’s little assurance that tourist dollars go to the indigenous people. The World Bank estimates that 55 percent of tourist spending in developing countries leaks back to industrialized ones through foreign ownership of hotels and tour companies; other studies suggest the figure could be as high as 90%.

The money that does stay in the country often goes to the nation's "haves." A tourism boom in the Ecuadorian Amazon has attracted many guides and outfitters from other parts of the country. "Indigenous guides often lack the appropriate hospitality training and language skills to lead foreign tourists," says Ms. Epler

Wood. "So they’re shunted aside by these canny outsiders who pay little, if anything, for the right to use indigenous lands for their ecotours." But most established tour operators take pains to include indigenous people in their programs. For example, when Daniel Koupermann, general manager of Ecuador’s Canodros tour operator, sought to develop a jungle extension to his company’s Galapagos Islands tours in 1994, he approached leaders of the Achuar, an indigenous tribe from Ecuador’s remote southern Amazon jungle. The result is Kapawi, a recently opened ecolodge that combines sustainable development practices, such as solar powered electrical systems and composting toilets, with traditional Anchuar architecture.

Extensive research on the flora and fauna (including endangered river otters and more than 400 bird species) was conducted before the facility opened, and an extensive systems of river trips and hikes were developed to prevent overuse of trails. Visitors to the lodge are briefed on Anchaur customs and advised to respect indigenous traditions. Charity, for example, is frowned upon. "It destroys the indigenous gift economy," explains Mr. Koupermann. "Giving a gift without expecting a favor in return can damage the entire social network of indigenous groups in Amazonia." Sixteen Anchaur communities now participate in the Kapawi endeavor, and they derive nearly half of their total income from employment in and business with the ecolodge. The agreement between Canodros and the Anchuar also provides training for the Anchaur in managing and marketing Kapawi --- a precursor to the eventual transference of the lodge’s ownership from Canodros to the Anchuar.

Yet even carefully planned projects can have unexpected consequences. In Malaysia, for example, villagers in Kampung Kuantan teamed with a local conservation organization to develop an ecotour to view fireflies on the Selangor River, where huge numbers of the insects feed on mangrove trees, creating a remarkable spectacle of luminescent flashes. The tours soon became the largest source of income and employment in the area, and rival groups began competing for access --- using powerboats that can cause river bank erosion. As tensions rose, efforts to manage the mangrove ecosystem along the river were suspended as relations between villagers deteriorated.

"There’s pros and cons to every project," says Oliver Hillel, director of ecotourism at Conservation International, which only funds ecotravel projects in places where economic needs threaten the environment. "If a community’s economic needs are in balance with their resources, we simply don’t start a project there."

Unfortunately, today’s world contains scant few examples of such idyllic places. "In many parts of the world right now, it’s really a matter of whether to turn an important natural ecosystem into a tourist attraction, or give it to a timber extraction company," says Dr. Wilson. "And the choice is clear. It’s far better to have wildlife and the natural environments they live in slightly disturbed (by tourists) than to become a wasteland."

END