International Centre for Ecotourism Research, Griffith School of Environment, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia.
PLoS One. 2012;7(9):e43757. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0043757. Epub 2012 Sep 12.
Protected areas are critical for the conservation of many threatened species. Despite this, many protected areas are acutely underfunded, which reduces their effectiveness significantly. Tourism is one mechanism to promote and fund conservation in protected areas, but there are few studies analyzing its tangible conservation outcomes for threatened species. This study uses the 415 IUCN critically endangered frog species to evaluate the contribution of protected area tourism revenue to conservation. Contributions were calculated for each species as the proportion of geographic range inside protected areas multiplied by the proportion of protected area revenues derived from tourism. Geographic ranges were determined from IUCN Extent of Occurrence maps. Almost 60% (239) of critically endangered frog species occur in protected areas. Higher proportions of total range are protected in Nearctic, Australasian and Afrotopical regions. Tourism contributions to protected area budgets ranged from 5-100%. These financial contributions are highest for developing countries in the Afrotropical, Indomalayan and Neotropical regions. Data for both geographic range and budget are available for 201 critically endangered frog species with proportional contributions from tourism to species protection ranging from 0.8-99%. Tourism's financial contributions to critically endangered frog species protection are highest in the Afrotropical region. This study uses a coarse measure but at the global scale it demonstrates that tourism has significant potential to contribute to global frog conservation efforts.
保护区对许多濒危物种的保护至关重要。尽管如此，许多保护区资金严重短缺，这大大降低了它们的有效性。旅游业是促进和资助保护区保护的一种机制，但很少有研究分析其对濒危物种的有形保护结果。本研究使用 IUCN 濒危 415 种青蛙物种来评估保护区旅游收入对保护的贡献。对于每种物种，贡献都按照保护区内地理范围的比例乘以从旅游中获得的保护区收入的比例来计算。地理范围是根据 IUCN 出现范围图确定的。近 60%（239 种）的濒危青蛙物种存在于保护区内。近北极、澳大拉西亚和非洲热带地区的总范围有更高的保护比例。旅游对保护区预算的贡献从 5%到 100%不等。在非洲热带、印度-马来亚和新热带地区的发展中国家，这些财政贡献最高。对于 201 种濒危青蛙物种，既有地理范围数据，也有预算数据，旅游对物种保护的比例贡献从 0.8%到 99%不等。旅游业对濒危青蛙物种保护的财政贡献在非洲热带地区最高。本研究使用了一种粗略的衡量标准，但在全球范围内，它表明旅游业具有为全球青蛙保护努力做出重大贡献的潜力。
