Nature-based tourism
Project Tiger promoted by the World Wildlife Fund led by British aristocracy and spearheaded in India by Bombay Natural History Society was launched in parallel with promulgation of WLPA in 1972. This had its roots in Western commercial interests in nature-based tourism in their ex-colonies to take advantage of the rapid proliferation of photography, television and international air travel. Savannas of East and South Africa and the deciduous forests of India with their wildlife were good possibilities; rain forests of West Africa or of South America were not conducive to viewing wildlife; these were exploited for minerals and destroyed to set up cattle ranches to supply beef to US and Europe. Project Tiger Reserves, supported by the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, were set up in India on Kenya’s Masai Mara Game Reserve model. I had visited Masai mara in 1971 and witnessed the total domination by Europeans of the management to cater to European tourists. In 2019, my friend Vijay Edlabadkar visited Masai Mara through bookings made by an Indian agent working for a European travel agency. His tour was tightly controlled by the travel agency to ensure that he would not have any opportunity to speak to a single local citizen other than the driver. The driver refused to stop even for a minute for my friend to buy a trinket from a street-side vendor. He was kept under house arrest in the hotel where he was staying with the guard refusing to open the gate to walk around the bazar just outside the hotel. Huge tracts of land abutting the Game Reserve were owned by the owner of the European tour agency and the tours
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