Tourist activities focusing on Antarctic penguins

BERTELLOTTI, M.; D'AMICO, V.; CEJUELA, E.

ANNALS OF TOURISM RESEARCH

Elsevier

Año: 2013 vol. 42 p. 428 - 431

0160-7383

There is increasing pressure from the Antarctic tourist industry to increase the current configuration of penguin-focused tourism and open new spaces and opportunities for visitors, and from the tourists themselves to have access and proximity to get your precious photo of penguins. Therefore, it is crucial to be careful with the selection of sites to be promoted in order to minimise the impact of tourism, especially in the Antarctic Peninsula where the global warming is faster than any other part of the world. Management design must be based on new paradigm of planning criteria that take in account the context of climate change. This manuscript recommends rethinking the conservation strategies based on adaptation mechanisms of tourism management. This article proposes to apply strategies of adaptation for tourism of the Antarctic penguins in a scenario of climate change. The impact of tourists adds to all the other factors that reduce viability of penguin populations such as variations in the abundance of prey and other effects of global climate change. Recommendations proposed in the manuscript are particularly addressed to the Antarctic tourism stakeholders since they express concern that technological advancements and potentially the impacts of climate change may reduce the scale of natural barriers. Consequently, a further increase of visitor numbers and a greater density of vessel traffic, especially at the most popular sites in the Antarctic Peninsula region, are to be expected. Therefore, it will be very necessary to reconsider the management of Antarctic natural resources by the application of recommendations proposed which would be very useful for the readers of ATR.