The Lure of a Green Eden
by Alex Hawes

Five miles downriver from the Brazilian jungle city of Manaus, the main arm of the Amazon, the Rio Solimões, joins its largest tributary, the Rio Negro. Each branch holds more water than any other river on Earth. Here at the Meeting-of-the-Waters, the dark, acidic tea of the Rio Negro collides with the Solimões’ rich, café au lait current. A cleft of choppy, black and brown waves stretches 12 miles before the two currents finally blend to form the mighty Amazon.

Back in Manaus, an industrial city of 1.5 million and the origin of many an Amazon adventure, equally resolute forces of development and conservation, travel and culture, converge. At the confluence of these surging social tides is a concept with a hundred meanings and a thousand bends: ecotourism. Its definition remains as murky as the Amazon’s silt-laden currents; its implications run as deep and as far.

Nowhere are ecotourism’s potential benefits more critical than in Amazonia. The water-recycling and air-conditioning rainforests here have been dubbed "the lungs of the Earth." Yet distant macroeconomic forces have conspired to make consumptive derivatives of the Brazilian jungle—particularly timber, natural gas, minerals, and cattle—valuable in the short term. As loggers and ranchers burn holes into the once-blanketing forest canopy, Brazil’s wildlife defenders are sent scrambling for help. To them, tourism might offer a sustainable and profitable alternative.

Brazil’s vast forests and 4,000-plus miles of coastline offer heavenly possibilities for the aspiring ecotourist. A nation of natural superlatives, Brazil boasts the world’s largest tropical wilderness, most massive river, and most extensive freshwater archipelago, and houses the largest inventory of plant and animal species of any country—including the most primates, amphibians, and flowering plants, and the largest snake, rodent, moth, and ant.

By all rights, Brazil should be an ecotourist paradise. Yet it ranks far down—fiftieth!—on the list of countries whose economies most depend on tourism, and behind Egypt, Turkey, Thailand, and Korea (not to mention France and the United States) in gross tourism receipts. The nation has stumbled and staggered into a highly competitive, and fickle, nature travel market, where a lush rainforest with intriguing indigenous cultures and wondrous wildlife could equally well describe Panama, Ghana, or Papua New Guinea. Tourism in and around Manaus has dropped 40 percent over the last decade, according to Brazil’s ecotourism association, EcoBrasil. Foreign travelers are taking their business to jungles elsewhere.

Moreover, the stream of travel revenue that does flow into the Brazilian Amazon rarely trickles past the tour operators and hotel owners. Only an occasional droplet reaches the caboclos in the forest—the rubber tappers and manioc farmers and piranha fishermen of mixed European and Indian heritage, from whom the government bans the firewood of the region’s lush forests and the meat of the giant arapaima (indeed, the world’s largest freshwater fish).

To most conservationists, nature travel that doesn’t reward both man and beast is not true ecotourism. For "green travel" to succeed—to sustain itself and all it touches—not only must tourists go home happy. The local residents, ultimate caretakers of the environmental attractions nature travelers seek, must benefit too. If not, tourism transmutes into something far less attractive. It becomes an alien weed, like kudzu: spreading its strangling roots, contributing nothing.

Mexican economist Héctor Ceballos-Lascuraín first spawned the term "ecotourism" in the early 1980s. One could pick 1978, however, as the official dawning of the modern ecotourist era. In that year, Kenya banned hunting in an effort to save its vanishing herds of game animals. Safari outfits—the clever ones—recognized the potential for a new source of income, coining the slogan, "Come shooting to Kenya with your camera." And the foreigners came, with more than 1 million annual visitors, spending more than $350 million a year—and employing over 200,000 workers—having now made Kenya one of the world’s premier tourist destinations.

But even the best intentions go awry. Shrewd marketers have since slapped the ecotourist label on anything and everything, whether their trips are environmentally sound or not. On the Himalayan trails of Nepal, hut owners burning wood to warm hikers have caused the treeline to retreat several hundred feet. In Yellowstone, plump little marmots (not to mention the grizzlies) have the chutzpah of Times Square panhandlers. And in Costa Rica—Latin America’s ecotourist hotspot—some park visitors shake quetzal nests to capture the fleeing birds on film. After the 250 million or so yearly nature travelers go home, the Great Outdoors is rarely the same.

Brazil plunged headfirst into ecotourism a decade ago without first testing the waters. According to EcoBrasil data, the number of foreigners coming to Brazil has quadrupled to 4.8 million a year since 1990. The recent devaluation of the country’s currency has made travel here more affordable. Yet most tourists to Brazil forego the rainforest, opting instead for big cities like São Paulo or the beaches of Rio. (The country is far from alone in this trend: About 60 percent of travelers to Kenya visit coastal resorts rather than game parks.) Brazil’s government tourism board, Embratur, hopes to redirect this stream.

"I’m seeing Brazil try to change its image into being a more natural destination," says Lacey Gude, president of Virginia-based Gerosa Tours and Amazon Adventurers. "It’s getting away from the three Ss: samba, sand, and soccer." Still, few people turn up at her office bent on traveling to Brazil’s wildlands—due, she believes, to an overall lack of marketing abroad by the government. Indeed, most tourists in Brazil are Brazilian.

On the surface, Brazil furnishes the fields for many nature travel dreams. The volcanic Fernando de Noronha islands, near Recife, have earned the label the "Brazilian Galapagos" for the archipelago’s countless sea turtles, dolphins, and coral reefs. The arid cerrado of the country’s interior, roamed by anteaters and maned wolves, presents a botanic wonderland more diverse in flora than the East African savanna. Iguaçu Falls, along the Argentine border, thunders down a gorge two miles wide, delivering a rainbow for the cameras every time. The Pantanal’s 360,000 square miles of swampland teem with storks, egrets, and spoonbills.

And then there’s the Amazon, the central artery of the continent, flowing out of the Andes with the mellow pace of a bossa nova sax. Within the vast, unmapped Amazon rainforest hide crimson-faced uakari monkeys, majestic jaguars, and indigenous tribes like the Yanomami, largely untouched by modernization.

Sadly, all is not well in paradise. Despite all the conservation projects and government proclamations, 6,500 square miles of Brazil’s rainforest—more acreage than Connecticut—was uprooted in 1998, while fires sparked by slash-and-burn agriculture decimated another 3,000 square miles. The amount of Brazilian forest felled since 1971 could cover France.

Nature travel could offer Brazil an alternative to the haunting sight of stump-filled landscapes. Tourists paying to experience pristine wilderness, the theory goes, create an incentive for that wilderness’ preservation. But while tourism to the Pantanal and Fernando de Noronha islands has increased moderately over the last decade, tourism to the Brazilian Amazon is in a slump. Occupancy at the 29 ecolodges around Manaus has dropped from about 50 percent in 1996 to 37 percent in 1999. The usual suspects bear much of the blame: lack of infrastructure, high costs, fear of crime, poor sanitation. But there’s an even more fundamental problem: The region is simply too big.

"You can’t easily visit several ecosystems within one trip without spending a lot on domestic flights," says Ines Castro, a former National Zoo researcher now working at Conservation International. Until Brazil decides to deregulate its domestic carriers, it will continue to be cheaper to fly from Rio de Janeiro to Miami than from Rio to Manaus.

"In Costa Rica, you can cross the country in a few hours. When you go to Brazil, you either go to the Amazon OR to the beach," says Castro.

Moreover, those travelers content to settle on a single site within the Amazon Basin find little to pass the time. Few established trails pierce the dense jungle interior, where visibility is hard enough as it is. The only jaguar you’ll likely see mopes about a grim, concrete-floored cage behind Manaus’ glitzy Hotel Tropical. In the real jungle, a matter of miles away as the macaw flies, you’ll search for days in vain to find a wild jaguar. Spread over millions of acres, the wildlife blends all too well beneath the dense canopy ceiling. This isn’t the thundering plains of the Serengeti. You can’t point-and-click blindfolded.

Yet wildlife-spying opportunities do exist on a boat ride up the Rio Negro or Rio Solimões from the Amazon’s fork near Manaus. With any luck you’ll spot both pink and gray river dolphins, alligators and caimans, toucans and screaming pihas, coral snakes and tarantulas. Harder to find are ways to spend your cash that benefit the local populace.

Consider Jaú National Park, at 8,600 square miles the largest rainforest reserve in the world, bigger than New Jersey. The park harbors one of the world’s largest moths, a beetle larger than your hand, and a species of woodcreeper (a bird) once believed extinct. Upriver from Manaus 18 hours by boat—and only by boat—the reserve has few full-time rangers, and no visitor center, trail system, hotel, or campground. Apart from wealthy European sport fishermen arriving by pontoon plane, Jaú sees few outside visitors. "It is a destination for the happy few," says Ariane Janer of EcoBrasil.

That may change some day. The government recently eliminated many of the bureaucratic procedures once necessary to gain entrance to the park. And World Wildlife Fund (WWF)-Brazil has formed a partnership with the Vitoria Amazonica Foundation to explore tourist concessions for Jaú. The Foundation plans to open a community center there for the park’s inhabitants, many of whom lack the birth certificates required for access to government social services.

Poachers hunting endangered turtles today enter the park at will; the locals have little incentive to stop them. More fruitful tourism operations could pay for guards to keep poachers away or inspire Jaú’s residents to rely less on rare species of plants and animals for food. Yet WWF remains wary of blindly granting concessions to tourism "opportunists": travel agent wolves disguised in ecotourism wool.

And so Jaú’s 1,000 or so indigneous residents—many living in stick-and-thatch shacks set on stilts above the river—for now see little financial gain from the reserve. Any tourism profit instead flows downriver: to the Manaus offices of the boat owners and tour operators and overseas to travel agents in the United States and England. While Jaú’s inhabitants await their fate, the park’s wildlife continues to have a higher value dead than alive.

"To a caboclo, an alligator looks more like dinner—or a monster—than an endangered species," says Mark Aitchison, a tour operator who runs a small ecotourism outfit in Manaus with his wife, Tania. Raised in Canada, Mark met Tania while backpacking through South America. Together they built a jungle lodge on Tania’s family fazenda along the Rio Negro between Manaus and Jaú. They’d love to expand the lodge—to convert the inn to solar power, install chemical toilets, employ more locals—but the money’s not there, he says.

"I think the real political will to address the many issues at play in the Amazon is lacking," says Mark in an email missive from the rainforest. "The government has to contend with Indian rights and lumber companies, hydroelectric companies and conservationists, starving interior people and crime in the city."

Across the Rio Negro from Mark’s in-laws’ home sits an embodiment of the ecotourism dilemma here in Brazil. It is the Ariaú Amazon Towers Hotel, a vast complex of luxury tree-top cabanas linked by 100-foot-high walkways. According to Ariaú legend, the hotel was inspired by Jacques Cousteau. In 1982, while on a year-long film project in the region, Cousteau allegedly prognosticated: "The war of the future will be between those who defend nature and those who destroy it. The Amazon is going to be the eye of the hurricane. Scientists, politicians, and artists will disembark here to see what is being done with the forest."

Build a lodge here and they will come, Cousteau told Ariaú’s founder, Ritta Bernardino. He wasn’t wrong. The resort has quintupled in size to 210 rooms since its inception in 1986, attracting celebrities and heads-of-state: Kevin Costner, Bill Gates, Jimmy Carter, and Helmut Kohl, to name but a few. Ariaú even appeared in the nature/horror flick, "Anaconda." (Jon Voight, who co-starred in the film, later returned to the resort with his family.) The hotel has been favorably featured in Money, Newsweek, Forbes, and Town & Country. Condé Nast has twice placed Ariaú on its "Gold List" as one of the 100 best places to stay in the world.

But while Ariaú bills itself as paradise, some conservationists and ecotourism planners privately call it a "circus." Ritta, critics assert, has co-opted the surrounding rainforest to build his ever-expanding resort, with little concern for his indigenous neighbors.

"I’ve seen them dump their raw sewage in the river," says Oliver Hillel, a founder of EcoBrasil, now with Conservation International. Ariaú’s generators can be heard for miles around, according to its neighbors. Approaching the hotel by boat, you’ll spot half-tame spider monkeys climbing the walkway railings, looking for hand-outs or a shoulder to mount. One travel writer gushed that he’d seen more wildlife along Ariaú’s three miles of catwalks than he had during several weeks trekking through the jungle.

The resort, circus or not, draws the crowds from far and wide. Ariaú receives an astounding 70 to 80 percent of the Manaus jungle lodge market, estimates Ariane Janer, a market analyst with EcoBrasil. Ritta hires ad agencies in the United States, and a North American representative for the company is just a toll-free call away.

Oliver Hillel wishes Ritta would contribute more of the hotel’s revenue toward conservation efforts in Brazil. Defenders of Ariaú contend that "Dr. Ritta" as they call him—he has a Ph.D. in economics—built the lodge to celebrate the rainforest, not make money off it. Everyone else, they say, is just jealous.

According to hotel representatives, Ritta brings in doctors and medicine for residents of the surrounding villages. His generously paid employees no longer have to hunt river dolphins to sell on the black market for food. One ex-caboclo now is assistant manager, in charge of Ariaú’s accounting.

"I’m impressed by what I saw," says Mark Plotkin, renowned ethnobotanist and author of Medicine Quest (see review, page XX). Plotkin has visited Ariaú twice. "There’s no (direct) indigenous involvement. But it’s creating jobs, and showing that money can be made off of the forest rather than by cutting it down for two dollars a tree."

"Other places are boring!" adds Jill Siegel, Ariaú’s representative in New York. "You don’t see animals when you’re on the ground. And if you do see an animal, you’re craning your neck to see it for one or two seconds as it flees through the trees. People get frustrated going to lodges on the ground."

Siegel says that countless visitors to Ariaú who have had no previous interest in conservation come away inspired to preserve nature. "It’s a very profound place—to see the sun rising and setting in your room, in the canopy of the trees, to have monkeys looking in at you when you wake up," says Siegel. "There’s nothing comparable in the entire Amazon." The high-minded ecotourist is left wondering whom to believe, and where to go. Often times, the conscientious traveler must simply guess, and hope for the best.

"Ecotourism isn’t a panacea," warns Steve Edwards, a consultant in Conservation International’s Ecotourism Program. Edwards avoids defining the practice too narrowly, fearful of discouraging entrepreneurs from giving ecotourism a try. Organizations like Conservation International and the World Wildlife Fund are, however, working on a certification system in Brazil to recognize ventures that preserve the environment while benefiting local communities.

The region has one advantage: Most tourism operations along the Amazon belong to Brazilians. By contrast, roughly two-thirds of Costa Rica’s hotels are American-owned, according to Conservation International. And community-run alternatives are slowly emerging in Brazil.

For a purer example of the ecotourism ideal, venture to the town of Silves, four hours east of Manaus by car. The town sits at the outflow of five rivers—the Urubu, Itabani, Sanabani, Igarapé Açu, and Igarapé Ponta Grossa—and alongside the giant Canaçari Lake. For most of the year—when the rivers are running high—Silves is an island within Canaçari, so a motorized canoe will whisk you across the lake. During the dry season, flying fish may land inside the boat. During the rainy season, only the top half of trees emerge from the surface of the flooded forest.

Once on the island, a stone-paved street draws you through the town of Silves, past an old Catholic church, and up a gently sloping hill. The view from the top offers a sweeping vista of a network of rivers and lakes stretching toward the distant Amazon. Here you’ll find the modest Aldeia dos Lagos hotel.

The hotel is but one part of the Silves Community Ecotourism Project, begun four years ago with support from WWF. The lakes ecosystem around Silves abounds with birds and aquatic wildlife. But commercial fishing over the last 20 years has dramatically reduced the fish populations—and the ability of local, artisanal fishermen to survive.

"Commercial fishermen had very predatory practices," says Nancy de Moraes, the Brazil desk officer for WWF. "They’d come and overfish with no thought to the future." The community pressured their municipality to create a lakes reserve protected from the giant, Manaus-based fleets. With the opening of the Aldeia dos Lagos hotel in late 1997, Silves residents have protected their financial livelihood while sustaining the ecosystem that churns about them.

A grassroots organization known as ASPAC (Associaçao de Silves pela Preservaçao Ambiental e Cultural) represents the community’s interests. With financial support from WWF, the organization has initiated a project to monitor the fish stocks in the lakes and rivers of the region. ASPAC also created the Canaçari Tourist Company, based out of the hotel, to manage ecotourism in the surrounding areas. Visitors to Silves can now hire local guides for fishing expeditions (where permitted), night forays in search of caimans, or visits to the surrounding communities—to view, for example, the magic transformation of manioc into tapioca.

The project is still developing. The hotel has but 12 rooms so far, one-twentieth the capacity of Ariaú, a drop in the lake. Silves hopes to expand the hotel further, but Nancy de Moraes urges a measure of caution. "You want to bring some benefit to these communities, but you can’t overdo it," she says. "You can’t do something that’s going to raise expectations, and raise the specter of what they don’t have. If you do it wrong, you can’t go back again."

De Moraes remembers one trip she accompanied to the Peruvian Amazon in which an American woman, saddened by the poverty she saw, gave a family a $50 bill. A wave of resentment spread through the village’s other families. Some Amazon communities have been promised financial success if they pursued sustainable tourism, but few tourists came. More resentment.

Nature travel must nurture—it’s a seemingly simple axiom, yet one that’s hard to follow. Champions of ecotourism in Brazil wonder if the Silves model will sprout and blossom elsewhere. Over the last decade, conservation groups have spread the sustainable development seeds far and wide. What emerges may help determine the future landscape of paradise.

"Every time I go [to the Amazon]," says Ariane Janer, "I’m impressed by its sheer dimensions of water and forest, the thunderstorms in the afternoon, the riverine peoples. The sense of really being somewhere else."

Reflecting back on those placid waters, the warm breeze, the symphony of the rainforest, one can feel a near-tangible bond forged with this primeval wilderness. But then comes the sudden pang of imagining a world without such splendor. This is nature travel’s critical epiphany for the visitor.

At Silves, elderly residents have helped cobble together a map of the natural resources of their region. They eagerly point to places where the fish and forests have disappeared since their youth, and then discuss the possibility that the Silves Project may bring the fish back.

This is ecotourism’s critical epiphany for the host.

Searching for Gold (more!)

—Alex Hawes is Associate Editor of ZooGoer.

ZooGoer 29(4) 2000. Copyright 2000 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.