Sustainable forest management: heritage tourism, biodiversity, and upland communities in the Philippines

Abstract

This paper discusses sustainable forest management in the context of forest-based tourism in the Philippines. Integrating heritage tourism in the implementation of forest management is paramount because the quality and sustainability of nature tourism depend on the ecological integrity of forests. The role of tourism in achieving the goals of sustainable forest management is crucial especially in countries such as the Philippines where the demands for forest resources for tourism and other purposes have been increasing. The tourism management strategies to achieve sustainable forest management in the Philippines include establishing recreational zones within protected forests; using different native fruit-bearing trees in reforestation to attract diverse wildlife, which is a drawcard in tourism; prohibiting illegal collections of threatened forest species for souvenirs; enhancing the tourism and conservation values of botanic gardens within forest reserves; providing supplementary livelihoods to upland dwellers via agroforestry projects; and respecting the culture and practices of indigenous upland people while supporting their economic and traditional subsistence.

Visitor attraction management: A critical review of research 2009–2014

“…In the Natural category national parks played host to many projects with in the region of forty articles relating to issues such as stakeholder management (Coghlan & Castley, 2013), monitoring visitor movement around parks (Orellana, Bregt, Ligtenberg & Wachowicz, 2012) and interpretation (Kang & Gretzel, 2012). Forests, too, featured (Che, 2010;Catibog-Sinha, 2011) with research in natural sites often being large-scale surveys either making use of GPS and GIS as methods of data collection or as features of the interpretative experience at the sites (Wolf et al, 2013;Dai, 2013;Brown & Weber, 2010). Articles included in this study were only those with visitor orientation, rather than resource management, for example tree dendochronology.…”

“…Morgan et al (2011) investigated the effects of media exposure in relation to red tide algae blooms and the negative impact that media releases can have on park attendance. Several articles focus on the need to minimize negative impacts within the natural context and the lack of opportunities for natural sites to capture revenue from visitors that can then be used in management practices (Banerjee, 2012;Catibog-Sinha, 2011). However, these authors also highlight the opportunities for tourism activity to support forest management and the retention of indigenous community skills, with high participation on the part of local communities being key in the adoption and implementation of successful practices.…”

Unveiling the Veil: Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Filipino College Students

“…According to a report by the United Nations Development Programme (2013), there are more than 17 million indigenous people in the Philippines, with most of them living in different regions. The indigenous people of the Philippines contributed to the safeguarding of biodiversity (Catibog-Sinha, 2011;Salvaña & Arnibal, 2020), tourism (Alejandria-Gonzalez, 2016, and possesses their own agency (Eder, 2013). This supports the second theme of the study due to the varied experiences of the participants with the indigenous peoples they have encountered.…”