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Introduction
Wildlife tourism can have mixed effects on nature conservation. When properly conducted, it can generate resources to fund both conservation and research, engage local communities through economic incentives, and encourage governments to manage nature better (Buckley 2010, Ribeiro et al. 2018). Conversely, the literature is full of examples where tourism practices have negative outcomes for wildlife, including through baiting and capture (D’Cruze et al. 2017). As nature conservation is mostly an unprofitable activity (Strand et al. 2018), tourism, especially conservation tourism (sensu Buckley 2010), is one of the few profitable activities that can generate funding for conservation (Kirkby et al. 2010, 2011, Vianna et al. 2018, García-Jiménez et al. 2021). Therefore, even if initially imperfect, tourism for conservation should be improved and refined rather than prohibited (SEMA 2018, Muntifering et al. 2019).
Wildlife tourism is an industry that creates a million trips worldwide per year (UNWTO 2015). In the Amazon Forest, South America, however, it is still restricted to relatively few locations. This 6,300,000 km region (Goulding et al. 2003) has some world-class wildlife attractions (Burger and Gochfeld 2003, Lees et al. 2013, Vidal 2018). Collectively, locations connected with global tourism markets represent less than 0.01% of the Amazon region, which points to a clear need for expansion. The Amazon Forest is being incinerated at its southern and eastern margins to provide land for meat and grain production. This region is called the Arc of Deforestation (Fearnside and Figueiredo 2015), and is virtually terra incognita regarding biodiversity, with new vertebrate species, including even new primates, being described every year (Boubli et al. 2019, Costa-Araújo et al. 2019). In Brazil, substantial reductions in conservation funding (Magnusson et al. 2018) increase the need for the private sector to take a larger role in conservation funding in the Amazon Forest. The region harbours several charismatic species that have potential to become important ecotourist attractions, one important species being the Harpy Eagle Harpia harpyja (Figure 1).
Figure 1.
A Harpy Eagle female arriving at nest with a woolly monkey Lagothrix cana as prey for her fledgling.
[Figure omitted. See PDF]
The Harpy Eagle is the world’s largest eagle. They form long-term pair bonds, nesting in the same tree for decades and producing clutches that take 53 days...