EXAMPLES OF ECOTOURISM AND NATURE-BASED TOURISM BUSINESSES
The Committee had the opportunity to visit a number of ecotourism operations in Victoria, as well as elsewhere in South Australia and Zimbabwe. Ecotourism operations based on captive populations of animals are reviewed in a subsequent part of this chapter dealing with zoos and wildlife parks.
Phillip Island Penguin Parade
The Penguin Parade is a key part of the Phillip Island Nature Park, a park created in 1996 to bring together all the natural public land areas of Phillip Island. It is managed by a Board established under Section 14 of the Crown Lands Reserve Act 1978. The Nature Park's mission is to achieve `International Excellence in Ecotourism'.
The physical features of the facility include visitor amenities (including a shop and cafeteria) and interpretation centre, board-walks, and concrete viewing stands adjoining the beach that the penguins cross as they return to their burrows each night. The presence of the little penguin (Eudyptula minor), and visitor interest in this bird, are the sole reasons for establishment of the facility.
The Penguin Parade is the focus of visitor activity within a larger reserve that encompasses about one-third of Victoria's total penguin population (26,000 birds in all). The population is gradually increasing following the destruction of 80 per cent of the birds' former breeding areas on Phillip Island since the turn of the century.
The Penguin Parade provides a proven internationally successful visitor experience. It attracts over 500,000 visitors a year, of which approximately 300,000 are international visitors - mostly from Japan, Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia. Domestic visitors are from Melbourne (53 per cent), eastern Victoria (14 per cent) and Sydney/NSW (14 per cent).93 Over 10,000 students participate in its environmental education programs each year.
The Phillip Island Nature Park receives no government recurrent funding. Though a public-sector operation, it is self-funding. Eighty per cent of income comes from the Penguin Parade. Estimated economic benefits include $6 million to Phillip Island and $96 million to Victoria (1998 estimate).94
The Board of Management considers the following factors as key contributors to its success:
o) close viewing of penguins;
p) effective habitat management based on detailed research;
q) high level of ranger presence; and
r) high quality of visitor centre facilities.95
The high profile and financial success of the Penguin Parade provides an income stream that is used to manage the non-revenue-producing areas of the Nature Park - including an active control program of introduced predators and a `penguin hospital'.96 A research program is also funded, with research undertaken into the biology, distribution, foraging ecology and management needs of the penguin.97 Five full-time research staff are employed. Some of the research programs have been jointly sponsored by industry.98 Research is overseen by an independent Scientific Advisory Committee. The Board of Management also fosters a Penguin Study Group that has undertaken penguin research for many years. The research guides management programs.99
The Board of Management involves community volunteers and school groups in monitoring, visitor control, ecosystem restoration and development of management plans. Marketing is an important aspect of the operation - the Board actively promotes Phillip Island to overseas tour operators and collaborates with other tourist ventures on Phillip Island in promotion.
Future challenges are to increase and enhance penguin habitat, instigate nature-based tours for small groups, implement sustainable resource management (such as energy-efficient systems), upgrade facilities and make better use of facilities through daytime activity.100
Seal Rocks Sea Life Centre
This `visitor/interpretive centre' is promoted as the `zoo of the future'. The focus of the Centre is a theatrette showing `real time' remote viewing of an offshore fur seal colony.101 This facility enables visitors to observe the seal-breeding colony without creating disturbance to the animals.
The developers of the facility have gone to considerable expense to create an educational focus to the tourist facility. Extensive areas of the centre are devoted to displays and interpretation of the local wildlife.102 It also provides free ranger-guided tours, with targeted educational programs for schools. A range of amenities is provided, including eateries, a gift shop and conference facilities.
The centre is located on a prominent headland, within the Phillip Island Nature Park, overlooking the largest colony of fur seals in Australia. The site was excised from the reserve to permit a commercial lease to be established over the land. Its development created much controversy, as many were concerned that such a large private development on such a sensitive public land site would restrict access and be an imposition on the landscape.
The construction and operation of the facility was undertaken in a manner that, given its size, has attempted to minimise environmental impact. It is located on a previously much-disturbed site and a lot of the building has been constructed underground, as has the electricity supply and reticulated water supply and sewerage systems installed. The facility, which is surrounded by little penguin nesting habitat, restricts trade and road-access hours to prevent accidental death of penguins.
In addition to its lease rental, the Centre's management body contributes a proportion of the Centre's income to the maintenance of the public lands surrounding the Centre.103 The Centre management also fosters research - it has made the Centre's video data available to researchers, with post-graduate studies on the seals currently in progress.
The facility employs over 60 people and has annual turnover of $4 million. The entire facility was funded by private sources and built on a `build, lease, operate and transfer' basis (the facilities revert to the State at the expiration of the 50-year lease). It has been designed to manage up to 5,000 visitors a day. In its first year of operation, 1998, it had approximately 170,000 visitors, 90 per cent of whom were from Victoria. It expects numbers to increase and the per cent of international visitors to grow.
Synergies with the Phillip Island Nature Park (and Penguin Parade) are high. The Seal Rock Life Centre is, in effect, a private/public-agency collaboration - the Centre is a commercial business run by a private company with limited shareholding, with the Phillip Island Nature Park Board managing the natural resources upon which it depends - that is the coastal reserve and the seal colony. The Centre management has also entered into a number of cooperative arrangements with the nearby Penguin Parade. These cover parking and shuttle-bus services, and international marketing.
The Committee understands that planning and approval-process issues were of particular concern to the developers and investors of the facility - they were inordinately long and complex, and led to community resistance due to lack of openness during the initial three-year planning and construction period.
Bookmark Guides
The Bookmark Guides is a program developed as part of the Bookmark Biosphere Reserve in South Australia. The program was developed as a source of economic activity that met the ESD objectives of the Bookmark Reserve program.
The tour guides operating in the Biosphere Reserve consist of independent businesses, but all have undertaken a rigorous program of training run by the Bookmark Trust - to ensure that the manner of their operation and the message given is compatible with the objectives of the Biosphere Reserve. Each tour is tailored to the particular needs of the client and may cover, for example, the rehabilitation of arid vegetation of former pastoral leases, restoration of wetlands, wetland birds, and the kangaroos. The Committee experienced one such tour while visiting the Bookmark Biosphere Reserve.
Australis Nature Tours
This company was established in 1987 and is one of only a few companies in Victoria that exclusively offer native-species-based tours. It offers small-group and private tours to clients interested in seeing and learning about native wildlife in their natural habitat. One of its successful products is an afternoon and evening trip for European visitors to the Serendip Sanctuary and the Brisbane Ranges to see kangaroos, koalas, emus and other birds in their natural surroundings away from crowds. The proprietor of the company has found that even tourists who have travelled throughout Australia regard the first-hand experience of encountering wild animals offered by his company in Victoria as the highlight of their trip to Australia.104
The proprietor has found that promotion through overseas tour agents is effective, though expensive.
Dolphin Research Institute
The Dolphin Research Institute is a research body that provides information (free of charge) to ecotourism operators on Port Philip Bay, as well as to the Department of Natural Resources and Environment. This information assists tour operators to provide clients with an accurate and overt education message when viewing dolphins and seals. Tourist operators assist the Institute in gathering information on the species they observe. The association provides a marketing edge for the tourist program and ensures that it has minimal impact on the animals.105 It also promotes tourism that is very sensitive to the needs of the target species.106
Tour Guides
In the past few years a new industry sector of regionally based providers of nature-based tours has developed. These providers function as guides, providing interpretation and education. They play a large part in the enjoyment of visitors and protection of the resource - the natural environment.107
In Victoria a large number of tour operators are listed as members of the Victorian Tour Operators Association.108 Tourism operators consider that native plants and animals are a major reason for most visits to natural areas, otherwise tours "may as well be in the city".109 All Victorian tour operators listed with the Ecotourism Association of Australia list study and observation of native plants and animals among the features of their products.110 While most would benefit from natural environments to a greater or lesser degree, probably less than a dozen tour operators offer specifically native-species-targeted tours - all of these are small operations employing 10 or fewer staff. Examples, in addition to Australis Nature Tours mentioned above, include:
s) Australian Kookaburra Tours - includes Phillip Island and Wilson's Promontory in its itinerary, specialising in German-speaking tourists;
t) Early Bird Tours - specialising in tours for bird enthusiasts;
u) Gippsland High Country Tours - includes a number of `ecotours' in its itineraries - such as short interpretative walks and fauna surveys.
The number of licensed operators is growing at around nine per cent per year.111 A licence is required to operate on public land in Victoria.112 As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Parks Victoria has developed an accreditation policy for commercial tourism operators that has been through the Tourism Accreditation Board of Victoria. More than 50 operators had completed this accreditation program by mid 1998 and consequently were qualified for extended tenure with Parks Victoria.113
Lodge-based Tours
Another specialised sector of ecotourism activity is that undertaken in association with accommodation lodges. Little Desert Tours Pty Ltd has for many years operated from a lodge on the edge of the Little Desert National Park. It offers bird-watching, wildflower tours, spotlight night walks and photography tours for lodge guests. Gipsy Point Lodge, adjoining the Croajingalong National Park, regularly offers tours for bird watchers and field naturalists.
Tourists as Volunteers
An area of native-species-based tourism that is expanding is voluntary conservation work. Organisations such as the Australian Trust for Conservation Volunteers, EarthWatch (Little Desert restoration) and the Bookmark Biosphere Trust in South Australia are finding that tourists enjoy hands-on experience of conservation work.114 Activities have included planting of native trees and collection of seed for restoration of habitats, monitoring of wildlife populations and wetland rehabilitation. Participating visitors may pay to take part in these native-species-based activities.115 An example of ecotourism that incorporates research on native wildlife is the `Research Tours' conducted by the Eco Explorer group in East Gippsland. Participants in these tours gather data on the distribution of fauna that is subsequently submitted for use by government scientists in updating the official Atlas of Victorian Wildlife.
