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When business and conservation join forces

Eco-alliance formed to develop, manage Pico Bonito Park

The signers of the eco-alliance agreements hold up the historic document.

By JON KOHL

Special to Honduras This Week

If you have ever immersed yourself in the scriptures of natural park conservation, you may have come across the Legend of the Perfectly Managed Park.  In this faraway land, there was a park where all the subjects and royalty (called "stakeholders" in the old texts) periodically convened at a round table.  They debated battle strategies and logistical campaigns in the name of park protection and development.  Then each threw down his share of gold and pledged his sword to the Perfectly Managed Park.

While the conservationist round table today may still have more chairs than stakeholders, they are starting to even out.  A couple of weeks ago, Pico Bonito National Park filled another seat with some help from RARE Center, a non-profit conservation organization based in Arlington, Virginia.  On Jan. 19, the RARE Center board of directors while visiting the Lodge at Pico Bonito, Honduras' hottest new eco-resort located in La Ceiba, for its annual foreign board meeting, witnessed not only the signing of a unique alliance bringing an important tourism business and a conservation organization together around the same table, but also heard the words of the president of the new Mesoamerican Ecotourism Alliance.

Both alliances surface at a time when many sides are finally trumpeting that parks cannot go it alone, cannot be feudal lords managing every corner of their fiefdom.  Most parks in Latin American countries, and Honduras is more rule than exception, have little business administration experience.  Some times failing to reap profits even from T-shirt sales, how could they joust with some of the very experienced knights in the international tourism market?

But now on the North Coast, there is not only a beacon of hope but some early victories to be repeated and expanded upon, thanks both to open-minded diligence of people like Pico Bonito Park Director Gerardo Rodriguez and Park President Ricardo Steiner, as well as the encouragement of RARE Center's Ecotourism and Community Development Program staff.

NEW FORMS OF COOPERATION

RARE Center forged its ecotourism program in Honduras beginning in 1997 when it ran its now well-known bilingual Nature Guide Training Program with North Coast parks.  In that first program in Honduras RARE began its search for the Holy Grail of uniting business and NGOs by inviting Garifuna Tours of Tela to co-sponsor one nature guide with PROLANSATE, the NGO that manages Jeannette Kawas National Park.  In the second such program in 1999, the Lodge at Pico Bonito, built contiguous to the park core zone, sponsored a guide directly.

Early in 1999, RARE facilitated a vision workshop in the Lancetilla Botanical Gardens for North Coast parks and tour operators from Trujillo to Tela to cut a trail for developing ecotourism in the region.  The principal block to tourism development, it seemed, was not a lack of infrastructure or training, but an absence of cooperation among tour operators and park administrators.  Nonetheless participants conjured up the then mystical idea of the "eco-alliance" whereby parks and businesses join in developing and managing tourism products.  At the workshop the idea burned brightly like a castle torch, but soon dimmed into shadows.

A few months later RARE Center began working with Pico Bonito to develop the first public use strategic plan for a protected area in Honduras; the eco-alliance took a step forward when the plan formally proposed the establishment of these alliances around the park.  Attention then shifted in June 1999 to another workshop facilitated by RARE, this time for all its Mesoamerica partners.  They focused on the question of how to make tourism really benefit conservation and local people.  Participants agreed that responsible tourism organizations had to unite in order to penetrate international markets with products that contributed to real conservation.  The Mesoamerican Ecotourism Alliance would later germinate from that agreement.

So when the pens of the president of Pico Bonito National Park and the general manager of The Lodge at Pico Bonito stroked across a brightly colored document that had no legally binding requirements, RARE Center's Board of Directors wondered what kind of history was being made here.  Were two swords really coming together as one or just clanging loudly?

 FIRST ECO-ALLIANCE SIGNED

It took one year for the eco-alliance concept to find a portal into the physical world and then another year of intermittent negotiations between Pico Bonito and the Lodge.  What manifested this month was pure innovation between Honduras' second largest national park and the Ministry of Tourism's 2000 Copan Tourism Prize winning eco-resort.

The eco-alliance's crown jewel is the Lodge's financial contributions to the park, including a $5 entrance fee and a $1 donation for every visitor that the Lodge receives.  That's real gold for a park that has to raise all its own funds!  Even more outstanding, it is all voluntary, since the Lodge sits on private property outside of the park, but well within the park's influence.  Were it not for the mountainous viewscape that frames the Lodge's rustic wooden cabins, or the forests that feed it fresh water and air, or the wildlife that come down to fly over the Lodge and howl in the night, the Lodge would be little more than a warm night's dream.

But this dream is very real.  For that same day, Michael Wendling, the Lodge's general manager, delivered the first check of Lp. 2,700 to FUPNAPIB's president, Ricardo Steiner.  Fortunately, the eco-alliance doesn't stop with cash, other innovations include:

     * The Lodge will become a member of the NGO and serve on its board of directors;

     * The Lodge will offer logistical support in trail; maintenance, environmental education, and other park activities in its vicinity;

     * The Lodge will make available a park donation box and park information on its premises;

     * The Lodge will showcase local artisans and their work from around the park;

     * The Lodge will inform the public that the NGO manages the park publicize the NGO's management.

     On the other hand, the NGO commits, among other things:

     * Loan its park guide, when needed, to the Lodge;

     * Include the Lodge in any regional guide and guard training;

     * Help the Lodge process and follow up on "denuncias" (reporting illegal actions) that originate from around the Lodge;      * Allow the Lodge's guides and guests entrance in most public use zones in the park;

     * Promote the Lodge as a good standing member and friend of the park.

Brett Jenks, RARE Center's president, remarks, "It is absolutely critical that the private sector play a lead role in protecting the natural resources on which tourism is based.  Hats off to The Lodge for recognizing that in the long run, their business is entirely dependent on the conservation of Pico Bonito National Park."

ECOTOURISM ALLIANCE

Later during the meeting, Seleni Matus stepped up to the mike and told the board about the Mesoamerican Ecotourism Alliance (MEA).  She is business manager at the Programme for Belize, one of the few NGOs in Mesoamerica that has a tourism unit that runs at a profit, reinvested in a protected area in Belize managed by the Programme.

The MEA is a non-profit organization whose goal is to help conservation NGOs develop ecotourism itineraries that can be sold individually or separately through MEA marketing to international customers.  MEA guarantees that tourist dollars contribute to conservation and community development around protected areas, since it requires that member parks spell out exactly how they will achieve these contributions.  They also have to spell out their business plan, their communications and operations plan, their threat analysis, and their long-term plan.

Seleni explains that parks must link up with private sector service providers in order to be considered in the highly selective process that will admit only about three new members every two years.  "There's no way a conservation NGO can do it alone," the president says waving her hands.  "If you intend to take a product to the U.S., it is necessary to work through [international] tour operators -- and if the NGO doesn't have the capacity to build the product, it must work through local tour operators as well."

Pico Bonito and PROLANSATE of Tela are two of MEA's five founding members working through local tour operators Moskitia Ecoaventuras y Garifuna Tours respectively.  The former has designed a three-day trek into the mountains of the park while the latter has developed two products, one based on Garifuna culture and the other on a trip to Punta Sal peninsula in Jeannette Kawas National Park.  The MEA will soon market these products to US markets.  MEA's business manager loaned from RARE Center, Jim Dion, explains that "RARE Center is supporting the Alliance by facilitating its legal and financial establishment, as well as helping members with product development, guide training, trail construction, public use planning, and evaluation."

 FUTURE ALLIANCES

Pico Bonito is determined to fill its round table.  As if an eco-alliance and participation in the MEA were not enough, Park President Ricardo Steiner contends, "We have more businesses around the park that benefit from the park and should be helping out the park."  He fantasizes about an office wall of framed eco-alliances with the likes of cola bottling plant, a water purification company, the international airport, hotels, and one with Honduras Tips in San Pedro who has already offered to sign an eco-alliance to re-engineer Pico Bonito's image to improve its marketability.

But for the concept of an eco-alliance and MEA products to be more than novelties, they must spread to other parks.  RARE hopes its different strategies can spark further cooperation whether through eco-alliances, the MEA, nature guides, ecotourism promoters who work for NGOs but help form local tourism micro-enterprises, public use planning, or new ideas as of yet, unborn.

"Sometimes the role of a conservationist is simply to get two people to sit down together and agree on their mutual best interest," observes Brett.  "That's the case with the eco-alliance.  RARE Center basically facilitated a conversation that has resulted in the promise of collaboration and financial support for one of Honduras's most important protected areas."

And that's right out of the Perfectly Managed Park.