satisfaction. Aldo Leopold (1949) evoked the following scenario:
‘A piece of scenery snapped by a dozen tourism cameras daily is
not physically impaired thereby...The camera industry (being)
one of the few innocuous parameters on wild nature.’ The main
emphasis, and a reliable key-phrase for depicting contextually
sound eco-tourism, is authenticity of experience. New frontier big-
heartedness, spatial openness, open area access, first-peoples cul-
tural traditions, these are all part of that authenticity which
constitutes socially, environmentally and culturally acceptable
(triple balanced) tourism. Whether it be styled with some inac-
curacy as ‘eco-tourism’ or with some sense of Frontierism as
‘adventure tourism’ this nature-based experience can be identi-
fied as a preferred alternative to mass tourism. Most nations can
contemplate a sorter-gate situation by which the tourism ‘herd’
can be channelled according to their sophistication and their
wallets, upholding host concerns to reduce social and environ-
mental impacts, with discerning sectors diverted to environmen-
tally harmonious and socially low-impact, yet economically
longer-term, eco-tourism options, notably a host choice put in
place on a sustainable basis.
Above all else, as a broker would advise any risk punter,
tourism is a fickle industry where speculators will suffer when
the market falls and if there is a lack of diversification. It is also
an industry where a ‘getting it right as it grows’ incremental
expansion is important.
To the extent that there exists host-policy choice, there remains
the situation, broached earlier, for consideration of absorptive
limits relative to the amount of quantitative and qualitative
impact that the receiving community is able to accept. The quan-
titative extent of these tourism encounters can be controlled, for
the industry is indeed a both-ways elective. Cowgirl and cowboy
operators, in solely for the profit can, in accordance with Hardin’s
resource commons dicta (1968) competitively wear down natural
landscapes and debase cultural environments as though they
were resource commons for competitive consumption. The profit
motive predicates that benign hiking within the public conserva-
tion estate gives way to pony trekking, to trail biking and four-
wheel drive excursions, and that activities such as river rafting
along a nationally treasured waterway can be undone by jet
boating. The point to keep in view is that the landscape and cul-
tural contexts are of the public realm (especially so in National
Parks, coastal fringes and scenic reserves, including their
airspace) and should be subject to public policy rules, quota controls and regula-
tion. The bottom line is that the community is the base-owner and potential
regulator.
Growth Pattern Management 177Aldo Leopold writing in
A Sand County Almanac
(1949) on ‘symbols and
tokens’.
‘All these things rest
upon the idea of trophy.
..a birds egg, a mess of
trout, a basket of
mushrooms, the
photograph of a bear,
the pressed specimen of
a flower, or the note
tucked into the cairn on
a mountain peak is a
certificate. It attests that
its owner has been
somewhere and done
something.’1960 Vivid memory.
Climbed the then
uncharted Mt Hopeless,
at the northern end of
the Southern Alps, my
companion and I seeking
a ‘first’ ascent. The sum-
mit, a large remaindered
boulder, had a little cairn
on top, under which was a
tobacco tin containing a
list of five names!