The Impact Of Ecotourism On Local Community And Forest Cover Change

Ecotourism has a double ability to make concrete involvement to conservation of nature areas and supply benefits for local communities.This study in VNP had the objectives of assessing that ecotourism in the region has impacted both income of local community and VNP conservation,through improving forest cover.Data were collected from 100 local residents,both in ecotourism related activities and in other occupations.To test if ecotourism has impacted forest cover change,3 satellite images were analyzed,image of the year 1986 to evaluate forest cover before strict ecotourism,image of the year 2003,to evaluate forest cover at the beginning of strict ecotourism and image of year 2019 to evaluate current situation.The results indicate that ecotourism has a positive impact on local community income as it offers to them direct and indirect benefits.As an instance,direct support by providing monthly paying employment opportunities,and indirectly supports by providing community infrastructures such as health centers construction,road construction,school construction and water pump construction.The results show that there is significant difference correlation between local community annual income before introduction of ecotourism and their current annual income(p=0.03).In addition,the study found that benefit derived from ecotourism leads to an attitudinal change of community towards the conservation of VNP moreover,result of satellite images shows that the introduction of strict ecotourism has a positive impact to forest cover change(reforestation)with 0.23% annual rate of change,but this rate is generally low,more researches in the future to verify if ecotourism will have significant positive impact on forest cover change are recommended.As conclusion,there is evidence that shows the positive impact of ecotourism on local community and forest cover change.