Ecotourism and conservation in Amazonian Peru: short-term and long-term challenges

Several authors have suggested that ecotourism can enhance the value of intact wildlands and thereby promote conservation. Two rainforest lodges dating from the 1970s and located in southeastern Amazonian Peru have been held up as early success stories in tourism-driven conservation, but a more recent assessment reveals that both lodges have since lost their rainforest reserves to encroachment. One of the major reasons for failure was that the national land laws in effect se the time did not allow the purchase of land titles. Recently, Peru has instituted a process for the purchase of land titles in the rainforest. One lodge has used the new land tenure laws with some success to create a rainforest reserve. The very attempt to buy land for purposes of conservation can promote encroachment and land-buying speculation, and the lodge's current agreement with its neighbours to provide a school in exchange for non-encroachment is fraught with moral hazards and appears unstable over the long term. Tourism can promote conservation primarily at the national level, and ecotourism projects in the Peruvian Amazon can stabilize land-use patterns at least in the short term. However, the conservation of habitat over the long-term will rest primarily an the ability of the State to enforce a consistent land use policy with regard to land tenure and Park protection.