It meant visiting a place with a fragile ecology or an ecosystem for rare and endangered species so that the money could be ploughed into conservation. Somewhere along the way, ecotourism has in some places become an excuse to attach a green label to reckless mass tourism. In some places, ecotourism is hurting rather helping save fragile areas. The Wolong Nature Reserve in China's Sichuan province was set up in 1975 to protect the shrinking habitat of the giant panda and the elusive snow leopard. A new hotel is bringing in more visitors to the fringes of the sanctuary.
More tourists means more people employed in the hotel industry.
The tourists may not have a large ecological footprint, but the tourism industry does. But there are experimental schemes like the one in the Annapurna area of central Nepal that seeks to invest tourism receipts directly into the village economy for sustainable tourism and environmental protection. After ten years, the Annapurna tourism project is now regarded as a model for ecotourism. Tourist arrivals in Nepal jumped from 52,930 in 1972 to nearly 500,000 in 1999, bringing in about USD 150 million a year. The Annapurna conservation area is Nepal's largest nature sanctuary and the project tries to integrate environmental protection programmes and tourism administration, use tourism-generated revenue for health and education benefits for local people, promote alternative fuels to protect forests.