EcoLur
Ecotourism will be developed in the specially protected areas from “Khosrov Forest” State Reserve to Meghri. In this regard, Caucasus Nature Fund Executive Director Morrison, WWF Armenia Director Karen Manvelyan and Executive Director of Armenian National Competitiveness Foundation Arman Khachatryan signed a memorandum of understanding on 21 February.
“Today we have established an approach, which will enable implementing sustainable and competitive tourism development in specially protected areas through combined reforms based on the sustainable use of natural resources and developing community capacities,” Arman Khachatryan said.
Karen Manvelyan mentioned that WWF considers ecotourism as a sustainable method to use natural resources. “It’s called visitor program abroad. The group of visitors will consist of most 10 people. Every day maximum 50 visitors can visit specially protected areas. Besides the works carried out in the specially protected areas, we also work with communities trying to promote alternative ways to earn living,” Karen Manvelyan said and added that ecotourism can be considered as a source of benefit for adjacent communities.
A question arises whether tourism won’t harm nature protection in specially protected areas. In David Morrison’s opinion, correctly organized tourism goes hand in hand with nature protection, “We speak about ecotourism and not mass tourism. We don’t want to see how people leave beer bottles or garbage after them. We want the youth, the elderly and the hikers to learn wildlife.” Under David Morrison, the number of visitors and their actions will be supervised. Caucasus Nature Fund annually invests US $ 650,000 into specially protected areas in Armenia.
February 21, 2014 at 22:59