Lonesome George Dies, Ecotourism Companies pay tribute

Naturalist Journeys, an Arizona-based, nature travel company, joins the world in honoring the passing of a conservation icon, Lonesome George, famous tortoise of Galapagos. If he had a Facebook timeline, several parts of this reptilian celebrity’s story would stand out. Called the rarest animal on earth, at one time the government of Ecuador offered a $10,000 reward for anyone finding a genetic match. Thousands of tourists viewed Lonesome George every year. “Seeing George was pivotal,” says Peg Abbott, owner of the company and veteran host of Galapagos cruises. “He inspired ongoing conversations about the challenges and pitfalls of saving endangered species. Seeing the last remaining individual of a species or subspecies, particularly in the Galapagos where nature is so vibrant, was moving every time.” Visits by ecotourism groups, for Naturalist Journeys scheduled next year January 18-28, will help to ensure that his story is told, and the legacy of the island’s most famous mascot lives on.

Portal, Arizona (PRWEB) June 29, 2012

Naturalist Journeys joins the world in honoring the passing of a conservation icon, Lonesome George, the tortoise celebrity of Galapagos. Groups from the Arizona-based natural history travel company have been visiting George for nearly twenty years. “Seeing George was pivotal,” says Peg Abbott, owner of the company and veteran host of Galapagos cruises. “He inspired ongoing conversations about the challenges and pitfalls of saving endangered species. Seeing the last remaining individual of a species, particularly in the Galapagos where nature is so vibrant, was moving every time.” Abbott describes that groups over the years would joke about George’s lack of interest in females after years in isolation, but find sobering the reality that his subspecies’ existence rested on his failed sexuality.

Thousands of tourists viewed Lonesome George every year. If he had a Facebook timeline, several parts of his story would stand out. Called the rarest animal on earth, at one time the government of Ecuador offered a $10,000 reward for anyone finding a genetic match. In previous centuries, sailors and pirates captured tortoises, carrying them alive – sometimes for years – Flipped up on their backs with bound limbs, to supply fresh meat as they traveled. It was hoped that somewhere, in a port near or far away from the Galapagos Islands, there might have been a suitable female tortoise offloaded from one of those boats. Sadly, the money went unclaimed despite years of searching.

In 1992, with tourism on the rise, George was moved to a new pen along the public route through the Charles Darwin Research Station (CDRS), and his new lodgings came with company – two females. Acknowledging that no survivors of his kind remained, a mating with closely-related individuals seemed the only possible choice. Naturalist Journeys clients watched for several years as this attempt at captive breeding failed due to George’s lack of interest, and then cheered when in the year fifteen, he got inspired. One year, participants met a young Swiss graduate student assigned by the CDRS to help George find that interest in females, or to get familiar enough with him to collect semen – the only way his subspecies could survive. Through tourism, members of the group got caught up with his ongoing story; several joined CDRS or the Galapagos Conservancy. Clients kept in touch, and cheered when Lonesome George finally mated with a female, and then sighed with sadness when the eggs proved to be infertile – twice.

In 2008, National Geographic issued an article entitled, “Extinct Tortoise Could Be Reconstructed.” On tours, Naturalist Journeys clients learned that new techniques were making it possible to test some of the tortoises that did not seem to match their specific island prototype, and scientists were finding some of the lost genes. Remote Wolf Volcano to the north, the last island ahead of setting sail for the open sea, showed promise for such finds. Scientists decoding the genomes of the various subspecies of Giant Tortoises (once 15, now 10, and all but four very rare) thought they might be able to devise a breeding program, using molecular markers, to bring diluted genes from individuals of these mixed subspecies to a more pure form.

Giant Tortoises (Galapagos in Spanish) gave the fabled islands their name. Lonesome George acquired his from the popular 1950’s comedian television star, George Gobel, who inspired laughter in his role as a beleaguered, misunderstood husband. It is estimated that George Gobel’s namesake lived for over 100 years, forty of them at CDRS.

Space is still available on the Naturalist Journeys’ January 18-28, 2013 voyage to the turquoise-rimmed, World Heritage islands of the Galapagos. There, for the first time, Lonesome George’s story will be told in the past tense. Abbott is counting on positive news from a scheduled 2012 meeting of experts, held to work out a plan for breeding, repatriating, and managing tortoises over the next ten years to offset his loss. In this way, the island’s most famous mascot and his legacy will live on. Full details of the voyage can be found on the Naturalist Journeys website.

The Darker Side of EcoTourism Thrills

Mention Chernobyl and you will get a reaction from people.  For those interested in Eco-Tourism, however, there is an intrigue about places not visited by man in a long time.  The New York Times recently (as in this week) had an article about Ecotourism in Chernobyl.

As they note, for

English: Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

many people, ecotourism evokes a picnic in Muir Woods in California, perhaps, or counting endangered sea turtles on a Costa Rican beach or spending the night in a tree house with gibbons in Laos. Andrew Blackwell, a Brooklyn-based author and journalist, sees it differently. His idea of an interesting trip is less about beauty than environmental devastation.

Taking the idea to an extreme, he set out to chronicle some of the world’s most spoiled places for his book, just released, “Visit Sunny Chernobyl.”

The journey began several years ago when Mr. Blackwell visited Kanpur, India’s most polluted city. He spent three days slogging through illegal industrial dumps, toxic tanneries, overflowing sewage treatment plants and feces-laden beaches. The experience stuck with him, with his thoughts incessantly returning to that horribly contaminated but “inscrutably, mystifyingly beautiful” place. An idea began to blossom, and before long he was booking travel to some unusual destinations.

“On a more philosophic level, I’d gotten frustrated with how tightly our environmental values are tied into our sense of what’s pretty and beautiful and supposedly pure and wild,” he said in an interview. “I also became aware that, although I care about environmental issues, I had very little direct experience of them.”

Chernobyl, the site of the nuclear power plant disaster in 1986, ranked as an obvious first choice.

With a radiation detector in hand, Mr. Blackwell convinced Ukrainian locals to take him on a behind-the-scenes tour of the exclusion zone surrounding the reactors. He slunk through the decaying ruins of kindergartens and amusement parks in Pripyat, once a city of 50,000 but now a weedy, crumbling ghost town. He drove through tracts of deserted wilderness and breathed in the “sweet, sunny air” of the radioactive red forest.

Although the exclusion zone epitomized humankind’s heedless impact on the environment, he could not help thinking that, in a paradoxical way, it might have been good for nature: the disaster created what might be viewed as a giant radioactive national park that would be spared from major human intrusions for decades.

His improbable itinerary kept growing. He surveyed Alberta’s oil sands strip mines, where a boomtown of about 61,000 people produces double the carbon dioxide emissions of Los Angeles and supplies over a million barrels of oil per day headed for the United States. He spent weeks on a 150-foot-long brigantine combing the Pacific for the Great Garbage Patch, an area about twice the size of France where marine currents accumulate the world’s discarded and degraded plastic rubbish. He drank caipirinhas with boisterous Brazilian locals in clear-cut swaths of the Amazon rainforest.

He came out of the experience with a few nuggets of insight. “I really was struck by how much gray area there is in terms of what we know about the problems associated with these places,” he said. “What are the effects of having so much plastic floating around in the ocean, for example, and what can we definitively say about the health effects of Chernobyl’s radioactive environment on the people and animals that remain there? I’m not a scientist, but it didn’t take me long to get to the limits of what science could confidently say about these places.”

“I’d gotten frustrated with how tightly our environmental values are tied into our sense of what’s pretty and beautiful and supposedly pure and wild.”

— Andrew Blackwell

For anyone looking to delve into forsaken places, Mr. Blackwell points out that overseas travel is not a must. In New York City, for example, there’s the infamousGowanus Canal, where he often canoes. “There are still things floating in there that I don’t know what they are and I don’t want to know what they are, but at the same time if you hold your nose a little bit, it actually is a lovely place to go canoeing,” he said. “Every city has its underappreciated Superfund sites.”

Mr. Blackwell wants to convey a simple message: Just because a place is polluted does not mean it is not interesting or fun to visit, or not worth caring about. People still live in these places, he reminds us, and nature persists.

To value only the few pristine, unadulterated tracts of wilderness remaining on the planet is to ignore the reality that we have created for ourselves, he argues. Although he does support conservation, Mr. Blackwell said he hoped that environmentalism could find a way to embrace “the fact of all of these places, and the fact of human presence on the world.”

“I was trying to find a way to engage with the world that was not just based on purity and beauty,” he said. “It’s a love letter to polluted places.”

Sunset on the Pripyat River, within the radioactive exclusion zone surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

Eco-Tourism grows in Patagonian Chile

The following article was published in the London Globe and Mail, and was written by Gordon Pitts, regarding eco-tourism in the Patagonia region of Chile.  

In the dark dense rain forest of Chilean Patagonia, I am retracing the steps of Charles Darwin, in a search for the freak of a frog that bears his name.

The charming quirk of Darwin’s Frog is the male’s proclivity for carrying tadpole eggs in his vocal sac before disgorging the tykes into the world. The frogs come in hues of brown to green, making the tiny creatures almost impossible to see in their swampy habitat.

But Diego Stock, my exuberant Chilean guide, insists that he has spotted one hopping around this squishy bog a stone’s throw from the Pacific Ocean. It looks like a fluttering brown leaf, but as I bend closer, I catch the outline of one of the world’s most endangered species.

Darwin, the 19th-century father of evolutionary theory, encountered the frog in his voyages around South America in the 1830s. Now, 180 years later, I have come to Patagonia to witness another evolution – not just in this embattled frog, but in the new concept of capitalist conservation.

We are tramping through the forests around Melimoyu, a remote speck on the map 1,200 kilometres south of Santiago, Chile’s capital. It is a living laboratory of frogs, birds, trees, flowers, blue whales, penguins and a sea lion that plays hide and seek with our rafts and kayaks as we glide down the Marchant River.

Just as Darwin’s voyage expanded the understanding of life, Patagonia, one of the last vast empty places, is a test site for grafting protection of natural lands on to profit-driven ecotourism and real estate.

Melimoyu lies about halfway down the narrow ribbon of Chilean Patagonia, a region 1,800 kilometres long and fewer than 200 kilometres wide – from the Pacific to the Argentine border. Much of the land around Melimoyu is owned by Patagonia Sur, a company founded by U.S. social-media millionaire Warren Adams.

It is one of his six Patagonian properties, comprising 25,000 hectares, spanning ocean rain forest, gaucho grasslands in deep Andean valleys, and majestic glaciers on the ragged edge of South America. So far, two of these properties, coastal Melimoyu and inland Valle California, contain small luxury resorts, and a third, Lago Espolon, has more Spartan hostel accommodation.

“We are buying ecosystems under threat by development,” explains Adams, a Harvard MBA who sold his tech company to Amazon in 1998 for $100-million in shares. He was mesmerized by a trip to Patagonia with his wife, Megan, but he also observed a region that was in danger of a development landslide more transformative than any earthquake. It was poised to be overwhelmed by new roads, airstrips and potential transmission lines transporting power from planned hydro dams in the south.

He set out to save space for creatures like Darwin’s Frog, whose numbers have been devastated by viruses. And on this day in early April, Stock, who oversees guiding at Melimoyu’s eco-resort, is encouraged by the discovery of even a single specimen. He records the sighting on a clipboard – grist for a research foundation set up by Adams to study the region’s flora and fauna.

But make no mistake: Patagonia Sur (sur means south in Spanish) is a hard-nosed start-up in the tradition of the high-tech world where Adams earned his entrepreneurial stripes. It comprises a real-estate brokerage (catering to green-minded clientele), sustainable property development, carbon-offset trading and reforestation, as well as ecotourism targeted at affluent consumers who will spend $6,000 (U.S.) or more on a week that melds fly-fishing, sumptuous dining and a clear conscience.

Adams’s idea is that ecologically based tourism and real estate are not just beneficiaries of conservation – they can be drivers of preservation. He aims to attract investors by the potential for healthy rates of return earned on Patagonia’s still relatively inexpensive land. The funds will underwrite the acquisition of more and more property, to be protected by tough land-use covenants in perpetuity.

Adams could be building a model for saving other beautiful places – say, in rural Newfoundland, New Zealand or Africa. The old model was based on government-funded parks or non-profit groups wringing donations out of philanthropists. But Adams says there is only so much money available to non-profits – and governments are stretched.

Eco-Tourism in Louisiana

EcoTourism takes a major step forward in Louisiana

A series of maps and guides promoting Louisiana as a world-class eco-tourism destination are appearing  in tourism centers across the State.  With new technology in GPS and guides, tourists can now be able to find their way through parts of the state.

The publishers believe they’ve tapped a prosperous new market in the Gulf South, and that Louisiana is behind in this area.  “We’re very behind here in Louisiana, and in the United States.  In Europe it’s a huge draw”, says the publisher.

Looks like ‘Green’ is the universal symbol for sustaining the planet for future generations.

Eco-friendly Gourmet Inclusive Resorts are Karisma’s niche

From Forbes magazine:

Luxury resort chain Karisma chose their moniker correctly, and they’re living up to it.

As the owner of 8 green, “gourmet inclusive” resorts in Mexico, Karisma is a pioneer in the country’s ecotourism sector, taking innovative strides in unexpected and impressive ways.  For travelers interested in planning an Earth Day expedition, Karisma resorts are an enlightened and sustainable option.

El Dorado Spa Resorts & Hotels and Azul Hotels by Karisma are all strategically placed along Mexico’s Riviera Maya.  Their luxurious resorts are steps above the tried and true “all inclusive” framework, with a “gourmet inclusive” policy, sustainable practices, and their very own, massive greenhouse.

The newly expanded 100,000 square foot greenhouse grows all of the produce for the hotel chain, sustainably.  Garnering its first harvest in 2009, the Greenhouse saw a 40% expansion in 2011.  The Greenhouse is on-site at El Dorado Royale, yielding 120 tons of crops annually.  El Dorado Royale delivers fresh produce to all 8 sister properties within the Karisma family and holds the reputation for reaping some of the freshest produce in the region.  Even neighboring high-profile resorts receive deliveries from the Greenhouse for fresh herbs and vegetables.

Gourmet inclusive impresses guests with top-notch meals in well appointed accommodations – a rare find in the gamut of all inclusive resorts worldwide.  The gourmet inclusive dictum is unique and to be admired, as all inclusive resort food typically leads to mediocre meals.

“Our Gourmet Inclusive philosophy is rooted in culinary excellence and we feel these enhancements heighten the dining experience at El Dorado Royale while educating others about the Greenhouse’s impact on the environment.  The hope is that visitors will appreciate the benefits, practicality and enjoyment of going green just as we have on-property,” says Jeroen Hanlo, the vice president food and beverage operations for El Dorado Spa Resorts & Hotels and Azul Hotels.

The Greenhouse grows a variety of hydroponic vegetables – a process where plants grow in gravel, liquid or sand with added nutrients but without soil – such as heirloom tomatoes, chilies, bell peppers, cherry grape tomatoes, arugula, mint and cucumbers.

Locals and employees can purchase any of the fresh produce grown on-site, take learning tours – which explain environmental impact and the organic growth processes that take place in the Greenhouse – participate in organic cooking seminars and taste fresh fruit right off the vine.

The cooking seminar program is a series of interactive cooking demonstrations that show visitors how to prepare fresh dishes and learn the health and taste benefits of cooking with organic ingredients.  El Dorado Royale’s famed Chef Pierre Mourez – who has prepared meals for the likes of Nelson Mandela and Oprah Winfrey – oversees the program and the gourmet inclusive a la carte menu.

The Greenhouse is the newest component of El Dorado’s sizable Pasión por el Medio Ambiente (Passion for the Environment) program, which “includes solar heated water, tree plantings and major recycling efforts in the Riviera Maya.”  The assurance of quality food throughout the resorts brings travelers in and likely motivates them to return.

Other resorts with a similar model should consider the benefits of a guaranteed delectable dining experience.  An out-of-this-world, organic and all inclusive feast may be just the ticket to keep tourists coming back for more.

Be right back!

Have an exciting eco-friendly adventurous weekend everyone. We will be back Monday with another exciting story for your traveling needs.

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Ecotourism is Good For Sharks, it turns out

New studies investigating the impact of ecotourism activities that use food to attract wildlife for observers has discovered that the booming business does not appear to have a negative effect on those creatures.

According to a CBC News report, the researchers set out to explore the issue by tagging two groups of tiger sharks — one off the coast of Florida, where the use of chum to attract the sharks is illegal, and one in the Bahamas, where the practice is permitted.

They had hypothesized that the Bahamas group would show less shark activity around dive sites than the other group, but in actuality the opposite was true — tiger sharks there roamed over an 8,500 square kilometer area, nearly five times greater than the range of the Florida-based group, according to the CBC.

Image via Wikipedia

In fact, researchers at the University of Miami’s (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science have discovered that the opposite may very well be true — ecotourism may be good for the creatures that are becoming so highly sought after by would-be onlookers.

Their findings — which a UM press release refers to as ” the first satellite tagging study to examine the long-term and long range movement patterns of tiger sharks (the largest apex predator in tropical waters) in response to dive tourism” –  have been published in Functional Ecology, the journal of the British Ecological Society.

Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, one of five UM experts involved in the study, told OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer Andrea Mustain that the Florida tiger sharks moved a maximum of 1,000 kilometers from their tagging site, while the Bahamas based ones “moved massive distances…[the tagging area] was important, but they didn’t rely on it.”

Hammerschlag, colleagues Jerald S. Ault and Jiangang Luo, and graduate students Austin Gallagher and Julia Wester, attached satellite tags to the dorsal fins of 11 tiger sharks in Florida and 10 in the Bahamas, following each for a span of six to twelve months, Mustain said. Their work has lead Hammerschlag to conclude that ecotourism, when done properly, might not be harmful to sharks (and other creatures) after all.

“Given the economic and conservation benefits we believe managers should not prevent shark diving tourism out of hand until sufficient data were to demonstrate otherwise,” he said in a statement Friday.

Source: redOrbit (http://s.tt/16YV5)

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The term Ecotourism is not new thing in human experience and it has been practiced in most developed and developing nation. There are numerous definitions of the term, but according to American-based Ecotourism society, Ecotourism is nothing but a purposeful travel to natural areas; to understand the nature and culture; to understand the effect of human interference in ecosystem; and ultimately produce economic opportunity to conserve natural resource which is beneficial to local

Image via Wikipedia

people. I do not know how far one is justified, calling it the pivot or corner stone of progressive tourism. Ecotourism demonstrates the need of conservation of both cultural and natural environment with sustainable economic development including the participation of local people.

Why Eco Tourism Matters?

The fundamentals of Ecotourism are not only to travel to natural areas but it implies several other factors. It emphasizes:

• Reduction of consumption of natural resources  or optimum use of natural resources
• Maintaining diversity of nature and culture
• Integrating   tourism into planning
• Uplifting  local economies by bringing foreign exchange
• Involving local communities through tourism
• Creating jobs and thus reducing crime
• Reducing poverty by engaging local people
• Marketing tourism responsibly towards the environment
• Researching on effect of human activity on ecosystem
• Maintain humanity and respect for local culture, communities and environment
• Participating public for natural conservation
• Training local and other people who are engaged in ecotourism

Wellness Tourism and Eco Tourism – How it can grow together

The core essence of seeking out wellness is the improvement in health, which automatically leads to an enhanced quality of life. Wellness centers and retreats encourage maintaining a healthy lifestyle through a wholesome, nutritious diet and fitness-related activities. They also emphasize spiritual and mental health, beauty treatments and healthy sleeping techniques all in the hope of improving and bettering one’s health. Above could be easily achived in enviornment which offers Eco Tourism through Natural Resources.

The theme of Ecotourism is not only to have sustainable use of natural resources (air, soil, minerals, animals, plants and water) but it teaches us the importance of preserving those resources for our coming generation.

Eco Tourism provides an enviornment which is most healthiest, We are beginning to realize the effect of human activities on environment. Ecotourism promotes maintaining ecological process such as recycling of nutrients, soil conservation, reducing pollution, and wildlife management, purification of water and sustainable use of natural resources. Whic in terms provide better way of living and healthy environment for humans and animal which maintains the bio-diversity.

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Jordan’s Biosphere Reserve is an Oasis in the Desert

Dana (Photo credit: sharnik)

Up in the Ottoman-era labyrinth of Dana village, the RSCN is shepherding a groundbreaking restoration project with U.S. Agency for International Development funds. The developers who have despoiled the Dead Sea coast with large, unsympathetic resorts are being kept at bay, in favor of boutique hotels that complement the region’s rich heritage.

Though not as spectacular or wellpreserved as some other Jordanian ruins — Dana’s main site, the Byzantine citadel of Khirbet Feynan, was reduced to rubble by an earthquake in the 8th century — Dana’s ruins lay claim to being as valuable, for some of them are infinitely older. On a stony hillside overlooking the desert plains, I spend hours picking through the animal bones and limestone crockery of a Stone Age settlement believed to date back 11,000 years.

It’s little wonder that the locals should feel a potent sense of ownership. Yet all the people I talk to seem to have embraced the influx of low-level tourism. The old indigenous life perseveres, but interactions between tourists and locals seem unjaded. My trip is punctuated by invitations to share a cup of Arabic coffee — a spicy brew infused with cardamom — and handshakes with grizzled farmers driving their herds in search of meager pasture.

According to Tarazi, this honest cultural exchange has become one of Dana’s main drawing cards. “What started as a project aimed at benefiting the local community has traveled full circle,” he says. “Now, the opportunity to interact with local people is one of the main reasons for Feynan’s success.” From the outset, conserving Dana has meant conserving this timeless human presence.

Mohammad epitomizes the way this coming together of old and new has served to enrich the tourist experience here. Born in a cave not far from where the lodge now stands, he lived his childhood on the knife-edge of subsistence. From age 6 he worked as a goatherd, camping out at night among the rocky pinnacles with only his flute for comfort.

After he finished school, the opportunity to go to university lured him away from Dana — just one migrant in a wider diaspora, as the countryside’s young people, disillusioned by the traditional life, headed for the cities — until the prospect of a job with the ecolodge enticed him back. Today, that job, well-paying by Jordanian standards, means a better life for his young family and a small home in a village on the reserve’s western periphery.

And the job comes easy. Mohammad is a natural guide, as deeply reverent of the old ways as he is proud of his work. “Some visitors have said that this is the best trip of their lives,” he claims, later sending me the TripAdvisor testimonials of former Feynan guests to prove it. “This makes me very happy.”

Together, in pleasant springtime temperatures, we meander along the tracks that radiate from the lodge. Barely a minute goes by without Mohammad stopping to point out things that my less keen eyes might have missed, such as the pattern of a plant fossil high on a wind-polished wall, or a brief cameo from the reserve’s shy wildlife: a blue lizard darting across the pebbles or a griffon vulture wheeling against the lapis sky.

Of the reserve’s stellar cast of mammals — several of which are endangered — we find little, save for the gaggles of domesticated camels that we see often, their forelegs fettered to stop them from striding off into the shimmering desert.

Over at the pioneering copper mines, we spend a whole morning peering into the crab-holes that perforate the bedrock, attempting to imagine the files of blinking men emerging from below, laden with ore chipped from the seams that begin 100 feet down and run for 300 feet underground. In between sites, we walk along gulches scattered with shards of green malachite, where Mohammad demonstrates the knowledge that develops where harsh conditions demand ingenuity: that the white-flowered artemisia can be used as an antiseptic and that marjoram, when crushed, behaves like soap.

But our most memorable foray takes us into the famously beautiful slot canyon of Wadi Ghwayr. The scenery gets better the deeper we go. The walls gradually narrow, until we are burrowing into a gullet of granular rock that rises in raspberry-ripple dips and bulges, blocking out the sun. An hour in, rivulets of water appear at our feet, running in braided channels before disappearing back underground — a sign that up on the Shobak plateau, the rains are beginning.

“Where you find the water you can make the life,” Mohammad counsels happily, hopping from boulder to sandbank before pushing on up the gorge. Five hundred generations have done just that in Dana. And as Jordan sets the standard for eco-tourism in the Middle East, it seems likely that people will be living here for generations to come.

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North Pantanal in Brazil is an excellent location for unique local, sustainable travel.

Spread across south-central Brazil in the state of Mato Grasso and covering an area larger than the island of Great Britain, the Pantanal is the world’s largest wetland. North Pantanal

Image via Wikipedia

comprises a delicate ecosystem that benefits from dual seasons of flooding and droughts. The intense rains that deluge the region annually give way to a dry season during which grasslands thrive and support over 70 species of mammals.
In fact, it is, I am told by a promotor (disclosure – I received no compensation of any kind for this article), an up and coming travel location.  I am told that it is a wilderness destination bursting with life and color. The lack of tall foliage provides unequalled views of the natural scenery, and tiny islands dotted throughout the wetlands are ideal places to observe wildlife in its native habitat. Jaguars, parrots, Cayman alligators, and flocks of storks and herons are just some of the species commonly seen on a tour of the wetlands, a way for travelers to reconnect with nature while discovering the rich biodiversity of North Pantanal.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/10/28/prweb8915960.DTL#ixzz1cV6nWuZ2

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