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Tourism’s Impacts on Natural Resources: A Positive Case from China

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Abstract

Tourism development may result in negative impacts on natural resources owing to overuse and mismanagement. However, tourism may also play positive roles in natural resource conservation, which has rarely been verified in practice, although some researchers have demonstrated this in theory. In this article, taking the Jiuzhaigou Biosphere Reserve as a case study area, we conducted an analysis for the environmental impacts from tourism development based on social survey and interpretation of remote sensing images. The results show that the natural environment was not degraded and some indicators are even improving because all the residents have participated in tourism and given up farming and hunting. It is concluded that it is possible to use tourism as a way to balance natural resource conservation and economic development under the preconditions of making effective policies to encourage and help local people participate in tourism business and to benefit from it.

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Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by National Nature Sciences Foundation of China (40271032). We would like to thank China MAB National Committee of UNESCO for arranging and coordinating all of the field surveys in Jiuzhaigou Biosphere Reserve during the past 4 years. The Jiuzhaigou County government, the administration of Jiuzhaigou Biosphere Reserve, and the local Tibetan community and indigenous people provided great help during our interview and field survey. We thank Dr. Janine Caalders and two other anonymous reviewers for their critical comments and suggestions, which helped greatly to improve the contents and presentation of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Room 310, Laodixuelou Building, Beijing, 100871, P.R. China

    Wenjun Li, Qian Zhang, Chunyan Liu & Qifu Xue

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  1. Wenjun Li
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  2. Qian Zhang
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  3. Chunyan Liu
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  4. Qifu Xue
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Correspondence to Wenjun Li.

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Li, W., Zhang, Q., Liu, C. et al. Tourism’s Impacts on Natural Resources: A Positive Case from China. Environmental Management 38, 572–579 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-004-0299-z

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