Ecotourism Is Damaging the Environment

Ecotourism is damaging the environment

Tourism is one of the sectors that help country to grow their economy and increase company profit. Nowadays, many people would like to go for ecotourism because of the nature places such as mountains, caves, islands and waterfall and the beauty of nature environment attracted the attention of tourists. The development of ecotourism is growing rapidly in today’s travel industry. Government and tourism companies are putting their effort to serve the tourists better by offering more activities that are related with ecotourism. The local people can earn income from tourists when they buy souvenirs or pay to visit. Moreover, tourists also can create cultural friendly with the local people in order to improve the relationship between human. Tourists are seeking to experience wildlife and get closer with natural. Ecotourism is a tourism that tourists travel to natural places to experience the nature environment and wildlife without damaging the nature (TIES 1990). However, ecotourism has been affecting on the environment. Therefore, although ecotourism brings benefit to the tourists because tourists get to study and appreciate the nature environment, it is more harmful than beneficial to the environment because ecotourism is affecting negatively by deforestation due to more and more construction built for tourists such as restaurants,hotels and so on, irresponsible behaviour acted by tourists such as littering, plucking nature plants while having ecotourism traveling and pollutions of all kind such as air pollution was caused by tourists who travel to nature place with transportation which produce toxic gas that harming environment that can lead to global warming.

Supporters of ecotourism argued that ecotourism is more beneficial than harmful the environment because it is important for tourists to interact with nature and study the environment. According to Simm (2014), ecotourism brings a lot of benefit to tourists such as environmental friendly, cultural preservation and communities with local. Ecotourism creates the opportunity for employee in the local places. Tourism companies are hiring local people because they have more understanding for their own land and cultural. For example, local people can explain about their cultural to the tourists. During the tourism, tourists can gain more knowledge about nature environment by interacting with it and they get to study the beauty of nature. This kind of activity inspire tourists to appreciate the nature and enjoy the environment. These benefits may lead them to protect the environment. This argument is weak because ecotourism does not really bring benefit to environment but harming the environment (Kennedy 2014). Majority of tourists do not take good care of environment when they are traveling to nature place because they do not understand what is really meant by ecotourism. Some tourists do not think about their irresponsible behaviour may affect on the environment. Ecotourism is a bad idea of vacation because it is not only harming the environment but also effecting on wildlife animals (Puiu 2008).