Ecotourism Brings New Livelihood Source for Ecuador

Standing at 11,480 feet above sea level and enduring low temperatures, the human body usually suffers from respiratory problems, splitting headaches, dizziness and behavioral changes. Yet, as paradoxically as it may sound, more and more tourists are climbing up to that extreme scenery.

And Ecuador is eager to hog that particular attraction as the image of sunshine and beach linked to perfect relaxation is now beginning to change, at least for a new breed of tourists who feel more pleased with natural beauties than with eye-popping fancy hotels.

Projects aimed at lassoing this kind of traveler have panned out to be a perfect business opportunity and have spearheaded Ecuador in its efforts to preserve its ecosystem, one of the finest under the sun. As a matter of fact, reckonings are certainly putting some good numbers on the board for this particular business.

A year ago, Fernando Acosta became one of the hundreds of local tourist businesspeople to open a hostel (The Polylepis Lodge, www.polylepislodge.com) in a patch of millenary woods teeming with polylepis, a tree whose reddish bark resembles sheets of old, dog-eared paper.

The hostel, ready to accommodate up to 50 guests, is perched on an area influenced by El Angel, a foggy 17,715-acre ecological reserve that rises between 3,600 and 4,700 meters above sea level with icy winds breezing by all the time.

Like Mr. Acosta’s enterprise, there are now 300 ecotourism operators (indigenous communities and small-time impresarios) compared to little more than 70 of them that used to operate in this neck of the woods a decade ago. This information was provided by the Ecuadorian Ecotourism Association (ASEC is the acronym in Spanish), the same institution that now worries about the risks of overpopulation.

Around 60 percent of trippers coming to Ecuador are drawn by the country’s flora and wildlife. Even though the nation barely comprises 2 percent of the solid surface of the earth, Ecuador boasts an array of tropical landscapes, mountains, snow-capped volcanoes, 4,000 invertebrate species and nearly 25,000 plants.

The nation’s Tourism Minister estimates that by the year 2007, Ecuador will welcome more than a million visitors (eight percent of its population) thanks in part to ecotourism. This tourist modality has managed to take human pressure off sensitive ecosystems and has provided a new source of income for rural communities.

ASEC Chief Diego Andrade, however, believes the future of the sector hinges on man’s ability to avoid massive clusters of travelers, a dangerous phenomenon that could eventually kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, unless tighter controls over both tour operators and tourists are enforced.

“Ecuador should not be a massive destination, but rather a qualitative one.”

Ecuador, a country that streamlined its tourist legislation over the past decade, wants half its travel destinations to have environmental certifications in only three years, as well as the dozen ecological projects currently underway on the Galapagos Islands, the country’s premier destination lying some 700 miles off the mainland.

According to the country’s Central Bank, revenues out of tourism flared up a staggering 30.3 percent ($447 million) between 1999 and 2002, while the number of arrivals shot up 27.9 percent to 654,000 in that same span of time.

Those figures outnumber the earnings churned out by the nation’s top exports, with the sole exception of oil and bananas.

In 2003 alone, Ecuador came in for 760,000 trekkers and the Tourism Minister hopes to set a new record high this time around with 881,000 visitors. Would that be the case, the nation’s leisure sector could end up with a 16-plus percent hike for a second year in a row.

And the business has yet another profitable side: domestic tourists who spend some $1.5 million annually urged by the stability of the national economy after Quito embraced the U.S. dollar as the national currency back in 2000.