Tourism with a Hand Lens
"Tourism with a Hand Lens" is a term coined by Dr. Ricardo Rozzi[1] and his colleagues to refer to a new speciality tourism being promoted in the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve. Given the discovery of the archipelago's outstanding diversity of mosses, lichens and liverworts (5% of the world's total), Rozzi has called upon tourism operators to place this narrative into their offering for the region and take advantage of this biodiversity hotspot for non-vascular flora. [2]
In turn, Rozzi and the Omora Ethnobotanical Park have metaphorically called these small plant communities the "Miniature Forests of Cape Horn" to help the broader society understand the ecological role played by these tiny, but diverse, abundant and important organisms.
"Tourism with a hand lens" has been likened to a nature-venerating ritual by the ethnographer Bron Taylor in his book Dark Green Religion.[3]
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Children entering Omora Ethnobotanical Park -
Children at Omora Park discovering the "Miniature Forests of Cape Horn"
References
- ^ Rozzi, R., J. Armesto, B. Goffinet, W. Buck, F. Massardo, J. Silander, Jr., M.T.K. Arroyo, S. Russell, C.B. Anderson, L. Cavieres & J.B. Callicott (2008). Changing biodiversity conservation lenses: Insights from the subantarctic non-vascular flora of southern South America. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6:131-137
- ^ Hargrove, E., M. T. K. Arroyo, P. H. Raven, and H. Mooney. 2008. Omora Ethnobotanical Park and the UNESCO Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve. Ecology and Society 13(2): 49. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art49/
- ^ Taylor, Bron. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future. University of California Press, 171-73. ISBN 9780520261006