Officials of WWF Bhutan program, the National Environment Commission and the Royal Society for the Protection of Nature, a Bhutanese NGO, today are encouraging independent reports on environmental issues to be written and disseminated. Increasingly, in their efforts to get conservation messages across to policy makers and the public, they are setting up media interviews with consultants and other visitors to the country as well as attempting to place articles from international sources in the newspaper and on the air. Thus, the situation that one finds in Bhutan is seemingly simple but, in actuality, rather complex. It is a society and a government that values highly the idea of conservation but nonetheless needs reminders and instructi ons in the practical realm. It also is a society where journalism in general is not yet mature and its role little understood by much of the public.
Media outlets are limited, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage.
Now, it seems, it only remains for the country's journalists to seize that opportunity.