Local stakeholders will cooperate on national level in order to develop sustainable and community based whale and dolphin watching ecotourism in Peru

23.05.2006 – Lima, Peru: More than 110 local stakeholders, like representatives from travel agencies and local tour operators, local fishermen and indigenous rainforest communities, universities, NGOs as well as governmental entities regional and city governments, met in three regional workshops in the Peruvian coastal cities of Lima and Trujillo, as well as in the rainforest city of Iquitos in order to be informed about whale and dolphin watching on international level, and to discuss the implementation of ecotourism pilot projects in Peru by forming strategic alliances between local communities the private and public sector.

The three workshops, being organized by the Peruvian Tourism Board PromPeru and the Peruvian conservation NGO Mundo Azul (Blue World) for the conservation of Peru’s biodiversity and sustainable development, did count with the presence of important international specialists, like:

• Mrs. Birgit Winning, PhD, President of the US based Oceanic Society, an NGO with 20 years of field-experience in the development of community based whale watching tourism,
• Mr. Gregorio Villegas, representative of the organization Fundacite, responsible for the successful implementation of community based dolphin watching in Venezuela.
• Mrs. Naomi Rose, PhD, marine mammal specialist and representative of the Humane Society of the United Status, and
• Mr. Luke Ney, PhD, representative of the Humane Society International and Senior Officer on Trade Capacity Building

The workshops were also supported by expert input from the worldwide renown whale watching specialist Mr. Erich Hoyt, PhD. who created a blueprint for whale watching development to be used as a baseline paper for the dolphin conservation campaign of Mundo Azul and HSI in Peru.

Whale watching has become a type of tourism with high levels of annual growth. Whales and dolphins can be observed in more than 250 communities worldwide in 87 countries. This tourism generates an annual income of more than 1 billion $US and there are an estimated 10 million travelers per year that go whale watching. Peru does count with has a great potential to become a prime whale watching destination on international level as it counts with more than 30 species of whales and dolphins being registered in its waters, which corresponds to about 37 % of all known cetacean species.

Alter a number of field trips and being part in the regional workshops the international specialists agreed that Peru does present very good conditions for the development of these tourism, taking in account the great diversity of species being present, the favorable climatic conditions along the coast where storms and strong waves are practically unknown and the fact that Peru counts with the most healthy population of the Pink Amazon River Dolphin and the Tucuxi another river dolphin species on global level. They also were impressed by the way how local stakeholders involved themselves in cooperating with each other in order to start implementing this new tourism product in Peru.

In an analysis of Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) local stakeholders agreed that whale and dolphin watching tourism offers a great opportunity to fight poverty and improve biodiversity conservation by implementing a sustainable development of this type of ecotourism, while creating strategic alliances between local fishermen and rainforest communities on one hand and private and public sector on the other hand.

Local stakeholders believed that an important strength of Peru to become involved in whale watching is the countries great diversity of species, landscapes and living cultures as well as its great number of historical sites that present an added value to whale watcher when visiting Peru. Peru counts along its coast with adequate infrastructure in hotels and restaurants as well as a well developed system of roads. It also counts with basic port infrastructures that can be adapted for tourism. Equally in the northern rainforest there is adequate river access and a good number of rainforest lodges for travelers to stay in. Finally the fact that local fishermen and indigenous communities are well organized and do show a great interest in becoming involved in whale watching is another strength when thinking of developing tourism in Peru.

As main weaknesses to be resolved, local stakeholders identified the lacking aerial access to the rainforest capital Iquitos, the lack of knowledge about the distribution of whales and dolphins in Peru, as well as the lack of trained tourism guides. Stakeholders asked national and international NGOs and donors as well as governmental entities to become actively involved in financing and supporting research on whales and dolphins in Peru and to support the training of communities, fishermen and tourism representatives as well as improving cetacean conservation.

The main threats to the development of whale watching in Peru have been identified as:

• Illegal hunting of small cetaceans for human consumption in the coast of Peru (according to estimates of Mundo Azul about 3000 dolphins and porpoises per year),
• The culling of river dolphins as supposed competitors for fish by immigrating small-scale fishermen in the rainforest of Peru. (During the Iquitos workshop representatives from the city of Nauta near Iquitos denounced the recent killing of more than 100 river dolphins by poisoned fish).
• Marine and aquatic contamination by domestic and industrial sewage, as well as mining and oil exploration activities,
• Increased noise level in marine and river habitats due to maritime and river traffic, as well as the use of sound guns and sonar for oil exploration along the Peruvian coast.
• Other threats are the lack of security in some areas of Peru due to increased crime rates.

The workshop participants asked the public sector representatives to improve the enforcement of existing laws and to support the development of regulations that favor cetacean conservation on one and whale watching development on the other hand.

As further results the workshops gave birth to a number of local and regional initiatives for the development of research programs, environmental education as well as whale watching pilot projects, by creating strategic alliances between the different stakeholders present.

“The implementation of these workshops”, said Stefan Austermühle, Executive Director of Mundo Azul, “has made a dream come true that was pursued by our organization for several years now and we congratulate the Peruvian Tourism Board for its initiative to finance and organize these workshops. They are a first step towards a national strategy for the development of whale watching in Peru and the creation of important pilot projects along the coast and in the rainforest. Our job in the upcoming weeks will be to use the opportunity and strengthen the local stakeholders in their move to implement pilot projects and start developing this form of sustainable tourism. We congratulate the workshop participants for their immense willingness and motivation to become involved in the creation of strategic alliances between social groups that in general have little to do with each other, like for example local fishermen and tourism operators. It was a great pleasure to observe how all invited parties worked together in the spirit that only cooperation will make it possible to implement a real whale watching ecotourism that benefits biodiversity conservation and sustainable development of local stakeholders.”

The results of the workshops as well as information on the upcoming pilot projects will be published in the coming days and weeks in the English web site of Mundo Azul: http://www.mundoazul.org/english/index.htm