Hunting, trapping and fishing can be considered ecotourism activities when conducted sustainably, some tour
operators in Canada and the U.S. say.
Bill Bryan, co-founder of Off the Beaten Path, a custom travel planning company that takes small groups through the Rocky Mountains and Central and South America, presented this view at the recent International Ecotourism Society Conference, citing how hunters keep overpopulations of deer in check.
"It certainly is an ecotourist activity," said Montana-based Bryan.
Trophy hunting, where an animal's head is mounted on a plaque, is not part of ecotourism, he said, nor is killing endangered creatures, dynamiting fish, off-season hunting, racing after wildlife in a truck or using machineguns.
But many other activities fall into a grey zone and promoting them as ecotourism is controversial.
"Fishing is hunting," Hitesh Mehta, an ecotourism society board member, architect and expert on ecolodge planning, told the conference via video from the Gobi Desert. "Hunting tourism and ecotourism are two different market segments of the tourism pie and should not be confused with each other."
The society has no plans to issue a statement on whether ecotourism could include catch-and-release fishing, hunting and fishing by aboriginals or non-aboriginals, or hunting to manage overpopulation of animals, a spokesman said.
"It's still open for interpretation," said Mikael Castro, the society's
director of special events. "If we come out with a statement saying that hunting and fishing is not ecotourism we're going to get a lot of backlash."
"Certainly that's not what we're saying because we do understand there's a lot of cultural relativity to be considered. We've always had the stance that it should be debated and discussed and it can apply differently in different regions."
Virginia McKenzie, president of the Northern Ontario Native Tourist
Association, said hunting and fishing are an integral part of aboriginal cultures. Activities that involve educating people about that way of life should be considered ecotourism, she said, as long as it's conducted sustainably.
"We take just enough to feed us for the winter; we don't take more," said McKenzie, a Temagami Anishnabai who owns a teepee camp offering tours of old growth pine forests in northern Ontario.
North Americans, she said, are often more concerned with protecting aboriginal cultures through ecotourism in other countries while ignoring their own people who often live in Third World conditions.
"Sometimes we look so far out, we forget to see what's in our own backyard."
David Weiman and Maureen Blight run ecotours with Sawyer Lake
Adventures to observe moose, elk, birds and other animals in Saskatchewan's boreal forest.
This year they added a trapline tour, including talks with an old-time trapper and a prepared pelt to take home as a souvenir, to educate people about a vanishing way of life key to Canada's early settlement.
"We thought long and hard before that package was put on our website," Weiman said, acknowledging it is a sensitive issue. Weiman and Blight say they are frustrated by people who say hunting, fishing and trapping by aboriginals or cultures in other parts of the world constitute ecotourism, but not when conducted by non-aboriginal Canadians like they are.
Joseph Hnatiuk, president of the Saskatchewan Nature and Ecotourism Association, said true ecotourists want to shoot animals with cameras, not guns.
"That's what we're trying to encourage," Hnatiuk said, but added that tours including hunting, fishing or trapping as a minor secondary activity would still be considered ecotourism.
Rick MacLeod Farley, a consultant for aboriginal ecotourism companies, said adventure activities involving hiking, kayaking, photography and cultural exchange are growing in popularity, but hunting and fishing are not.
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