Interpretação ambiental e envolvimento comunitário: ecoturismo como ferramenta para a conservação do boto-vermelho, Inia geoffrensis
Whalewatching and other tourism activities that involve observation and interaction with whales and dolphins represent a branch of ecotourism that is growing quickly around the world. This kind of tourism is often touted as having a great potential to contribute toward conservation. However, if not...
| Autor principal: | Romagnoli, Fernanda Carneiro |
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| Grau: | Dissertação |
| Idioma: | por |
| Publicado em: |
Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia - INPA
2020
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| Acesso em linha: |
https://repositorio.inpa.gov.br/handle/1/11222 http://buscatextual.cnpq.br/buscatextual/visualizacv.do?id=K4713416D1 |
| Resumo: |
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Whalewatching and other tourism activities that involve observation and interaction with whales and dolphins represent a branch of ecotourism that is growing quickly around the world. This kind of tourism is often touted as having a great potential to contribute toward conservation. However, if not carried out cautiously, it can be potentially harming. In the Amazon, the river dolphin, Inia geoffrensis, is the main aquatic mammal species involved in interactive tourism. Endemic to the region, the river dolphin is important to local ecology and culture. Traditional taboos against harming river dolphins by local people have been eroded, and today intentional capture of dolphins as bait is one of the most significant direct human threats to the species. Ecotourism may prove to be a useful tool in river dolphin conservation among some local human populations by promoting an economic value through indirect use. But education is important to ensure that such tourism activities will be guided by an ethical and scientific approach that does not cause harm, while also increasing the tourists awareness of issues surrounding dolphin conservation. Two key principles in this kind of tourism are environmental interpretation, whose objective is to improve tourists awareness about the broader environmental issues involved in conservation, and involvement of local residents, to promote environmental conservation at the local level through direct economic benefits. The main goal of this study was to verify the importance of these two principles in interactive dolphin tourism with Inia geoffrensis in the Brazilian Amazon. The core of the study consisted of semi-structured interviews with tourists and tourism guides. Analysis of interview results with tourists suggests that they are open, even eager to learn about the biology and conservation of the river dolphin, but that their actual ecotourism experience provides them with little accurate scientific or conservation information. However we did note that tourists who were integrated into an excursion presumably with some kind of guide service had more positive experiences than those who came on their own, revealing the importance of guides toward promoting a positive interaction. Interviews with guides further reinforced deficiencies in the accuracy of their scientific knowledge about dolphins.The second set of interviews concerned local residents perceptions about the river dolphins, about dolphin tourism and about their knowledge and concern for dolphin conservation. Most residents (especially women) perceive dolphins as mysterious and even dangerous animals, a clear relic of traditional beliefs about dolphins as enchanted beings that, though eroding through time, still influence popular perceptions. Curiously, there seemed to be no correlation of people s attitudes toward dolphins and their connection or not with dolphin tourism. Most residents perceive dolphin tourism as a benefit to the town, even though few actually benefit economically from it. This study shows that the dolphin tourism by itself does not generate specific environmental awareness relevant to the species conservation, however the tourism activity does seem to generate a general positive attitude and receptiveness on the part of both tourists and local people to such information were it to be available. We see a tremendous but underexploited potential for environmental education (for local residents as well as tourism guides and tourists) to promote dolphin conservation in this and other sites in the Amazon. |