Pandemic Travel Restrictions Provide a Test of Net Ecological Effects of Ecotourism and New Research Opportunities

Abstract

Net ecological impacts of ecotourism, and related nature and adventure tourism subsectors, may be either positive or negative (Buckley 2009). Travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic have provided a worldwide natural experiment. Historical parallels were much more limited. They include past global economic downturns, conflicts cutting off tourism to individual countries, and government shutdowns removing ranger protection from national parks (Buckley 2014, 2020). The 2020 pandemic imposed far more comprehensive changes than any of these, and hence provides a more powerful test.

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