Wild life conservation & tourism

Abstract

The importance of tourism as a source of foreign exchange, attracted by the existence of National Parks and Game Reserves can hardly be underestimated. As urbanization increases in Europe and North America, and as it becomes relatively cheaper and quicker to visit Africa, there is likely to be an ever increasing desire to visit areas in which natural resources in the form of wild life are conserved. In East Africa tourism accounts for some £8,000,000 of foreign exchange every year and is the second most important revenue earner in the balance of payments. In some countries of Africa which have en abundance of wild life, their organization as a tourist attraction has been completely neglected and a valuable source of revenue consequently lost. In other more densely populated areas it should be possible to build up herds of game as a tourist attraction. Although East, Central, and South Africa are well endowed with tourist attractions of this sort, in the rest of Africa these resources have hardly been touched.