The reality, said Brar and other operators in Africa, is that uncontrolled growth isn’t sustainable unless one increases the size of the habitat for wildlife.
“How many more vehicles can the Ngorongoro Crater take?” said Ian Michler, director of Invent Africa Safaris. “How many more lodges should be allowed in the Sabi Sand? And how many more people can be crammed into the Masai Mara during the annual river crossings?”
Well-managed tourism has many positive impacts, Michler added, but the growing number of visitors heading to wild places poses the ultimate conundrum for the safari or ecotourism sector.
“It’s the ‘elephant-in-the-room’ issue,” he said. “As we chase the rainbow, marketing efforts and annual tourism growth targets get ratcheted up. But under current models, I don’t believe these challenges can be met in any meaningful way or on a widespread scale. And in the meantime, we increasingly degrade much of what we claim to be championing.”
Michler argues that the entire ecotourism model needs rethinking, including questions around funding and the role of governments as custodians of natural heritage. “Protecting the environment needs to be prioritized to similar levels such as those of health and education, which ensures it gets funding and technical support matching,” he said.
Chris Roche, co-founder and marketing director of Wild Expeditions Africa, says ecotourism has an important role to play, even if the concept is under threat from its own success. Among the challenges in Africa is the need for tourism to generate revenue to protect wildlife areas and support local economies.
“This is often used to justify significant developments, and of course these developments are preferable to less sustainable alternatives like mining, hydropower damming, industrial-scale agriculture and the like,” he said. “The conundrum we are faced with is whether these undiscovered or undisturbed places will survive if we do not give people access to them and in turn generate revenue for their protection.”
In Kenya, the matter has the attention of the government, and there are signs of change on the horizon. A new tourism plan presented by the Mara Conservancy and other stakeholders was adopted this month by the Narok County government (home to the Masai Mara) and includes new regulations, policing guidelines and licensing requirements for camps and guides.
Gamewatchers Safaris’ Brar said Narok’s new governor is committed to ensuring the experience in the Mara reserve improves and that he has already taken important steps, such as installing a new senior warden for the park who is taking strong actions to improve the situation.
Susan Ongalo, CEO of the Kenya Tourism Federation, said the government is looking at measures such as ticketing systems restricting travelers to visits of only four to five hours. There is also a clear drive to improve regulations that include periodic traffic closures in overcrowded areas and regulating tourism groups. Furthermore, the government is looking to diversify tourism offerings to encourage travel to lesser-known areas of the country.