PRESS RELEASE: IUCN joins effort to align ecotourism with conservation goals
September 12, 2016 - Honolulu, Hawaii -- Among the landmark decisions emerging last week from the 2016 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress is a bold decision to improve standards for ecotourism worldwide. Motion 65 (now Resolution 60), “Improving standards in ecotourism”, proposed by the Yale Tropical Resources Institute in collaboration with The International Ecotourism Society, Nature Seychelles, the African Wildlife Foundation, the WILD Foundation, The Wilderness Society Australia, National Parks Australia Council, the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, and the Moroccan Association for Ecotourism and Nature Protection, urges IUCN to renew their definition of ecotourism and address the barriers to its effectiveness as a conservation tool.
Statement by Dr. Nirmal Jivan Shah in the Plenary session of Our Ocean Conference, Friday 16 September, U.S. State Dept., Washington D.C. USA
Two months ago in July the U.S. Science Envoy for the Ocean Dr. Jane Lubchenco partnered with the State Department, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the African Academies of Science, the African National Young Academies, The World Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Global Young Academy to host a high level, scientific roundtable in Mauritius entitled “Advancing Ocean Sciences in Africa.”
In a recently published study by researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and McGill University, eating sea turtle eggs could be greatly detrimental to human health owing to the high presence of heavy metals in the eggs. Great news for sea turtles and conservationists protecting these species, but not so for the people of Panama.
Like Cousin Island Special Reserve which is managed by Nature Seychelles, many nature reserves protected under law provide a safe haven for many marine and terrestrial wildlife from human activities such as fishing, poaching, development, pollution and so forth.
