Fernando Garcia, Rare manager, ecotourism promoter, explores the connection between the super grand slam in sport fishing and the ecotourism enterprise Community Tours Sian Ka’an.

For the saltwater sport fishing hobbyists, the super grand slam means that a person catches four species of fish in a single day: for instance, a tarpon, snook, permit, and bonefish. It is very difficult to have a super grand slam because each one of the species demands a lot of knowledge, skills, and luck, so it is rare and unique. That is why it is easier to be good with one or two species, but it is more difficult to achieve three or four at the same day. However, the hobbyist pursues a grand slam, no matter how much effort is needed. At each shot trying for a super grand slam, the sport fisher can be nervous, bouncy, bored, frustrated, anxious, or happy. Finally, a super grand slam provides a lot of fun and pride to those that achieve one in his or her life.

Fly-fishing in Sian Ka’an 

Rare enterprise Community Tours Sian Ka’an (CTSK), a locally owned ecotourism operation in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve on the Yucatán Peninsula, is trying for its own super grand slam. But it’s pursuing not fishes, but other trophies: market, quality, capability, and conservation. These are some characteristics of those “prizes.”

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Fernando Garcia, Rare’s Manager, Ecotourism Promotion, reports on his teaching stint at the Fisheries Fellows program in Baja California Sur.

I spent a week at the Fisheries Fellows training course, teaching site assessment, a personal passion. We talked about a basic question: How can we improve small-scale fisheries and at the same time promote marine biodiversity conservation? During this process I was thinking about similar questions, like “Can well planned ecotourism do something to preserve a valued threatened species? What is the major threat for it?”  Complexity, uncertainty, and limited resources are common obstacles to respond to those questions and reflect the underlying difficulties of many environmental challenges.

But in the rich menu of Rare’s tools developed to support local conservationists, site assessment is fascinating for me. Well, it is more that a tool, it is a process that involves several methodologies and tools. During the week I was teaching it to the fellows, they all had different ways of seeing how it could help them.

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There is a Mexican song and an expression that says: “No soy monedita de oro, para caerles bien a todos” (“I’m not a gold medal wanted by everybody”) that basically is used when somebody realizes how hard it is to meet different expectations with a simple alternative, so there is a need for trade off. That is what happens with ecotourism entrepreneurs living in protected areas.

So in thinking about their role to promote conservation, job generation, and quality of services, it is common that people become overwhelmed and then start to ask what really matters in ecotourism. Local people, money, or natural habitats? Visitors satisfaction, employee satisfaction, or profits? Meet and enforce park regulations or new and catchy ecotours?  The answers to these questions finally lead to the models of ecotourism business that are developed by the people. I wonder how hard it is for local people  - on one side – to address some of those critical questions and on another side to show the way that those concerns are linked.

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