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There is strong body of literature exploring community member and resident perspectives on tourism that has emerged from numerous locations across the globe. Yet virtually none of this writing explores the role of repeat community-engaged service learning with local communities. What theory does exist on the topic indicates that increased rates of community member participation yield more positive viewpoints on community–program partnerships. Engagement in this form of tourism development in communities may have an influence on participation in the community institutions that have the most ability to influence local development outcomes. This qualitative, ethnographic study fills this gap in the literature by analyzing community members' emic perspectives of a recurring educational service learning program to a lesser developed region of Costa Rica. Surprisingly, community residents do not view educational service learning as a form of tourism, though they do see it as valuable for setting the stage for desired tourism development in the future. Findings also indicate community members' involvement in key institutions makes it more likely that they perceive the impact of students in the community positively. As the first study to analyze educational service learning travel from a community development and resident perspective, this work will provide a valuable theoretical contribution relevant to those engaged in this form of travel across the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been 40 years since Costa Rican ecologist Gerardo Budowski first proposed a potential symbiotic relationship between tourism and environmental conservation. Given the attention that marine turtles enjoy from both conservationists and tourists, as well as the pressures that endanger and threatened them, their predicament brings sharp-relief examples to Budowski's proposal of conflict, co-existence, or symbiosis between tourism and conservation. Although marine ecosystems are among the most productive on the planet, they are also some of the most threatened. While limited-take regimes have become the most common management strategy for marine protected areas, conservation success depends on the history of local resource use, the presence and nature resource management institutions, and an understanding of competing resource use. As in terrestrial contexts, this means providing sustained benefits for communities dependent on marine ecosystems. Carefully managed marine turtle tourism can be a means of providing such benefits. As a contribution to a special issue of JPRA focused on nature tourism in Latin America, this paper shares insights obtained during the stakeholder consultation process leading to the articulation of three marine protected area management plans in Costa Rica where marine turtle nesting and associated tourism activities occur. We seek to provide pragmatic answers to questions about the most effective way for park management to coordinate with local communities to ensure that tourism contributes to extending the extinction horizon for endangered sea turtle species within each protected area. The descriptive case studies presented here make clear the ongoing lack of systematic data about visitor numbers, activities, and impacts in Costa Rican MPAs and nearby communities. Yet the inclusion of stakeholder consultation in the parks' strategic planning processes demonstrates movement in the needed direction. Coupled with the new forms of social organization around sea turtle conservation and the associated tourism activities, two of the three cases presented here provide compelling evidence of marine turtle tourism extending the extinction horizon of endangered marine turtle species, confirming that Budowski's hope for symbiosis between tourism and conservation is alive and well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doubt persists about ecotourism's ability to make tangible contributions to conservation and deliver benefits for host communities. This work in Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula tests the hypothesis that ecotourism in this region is more effective at improving well-being for local residents, at enhancing their access to key resources and information, and at supporting biodiversity conservation than other locally available economic sectors. Data from 128 semi-structured interviews with local workers, both in ecotourism and in other occupations, together with associated research, indicate that ecotourism offers the best currently available employment opportunities, double the earnings of other livelihoods, and other linked benefits. Locally, ecotourism is viewed as the activity contributing most to improvements in residents’ quality of life in the Osa Peninsula and to increased levels of financial and attitudinal support for parks and environmental conservation. Ecolodge ownership by local people is substantial, and many local ecotourism workers plan to launch their own businesses. The data offer a convincing rebuttal to arguments that ecotourism does little to address poverty or disparities in access to resources and equally rebuts claims that ecotourism is simply a part of the “neoliberal conservation toolkit” that cannot help but exacerbate the very inequalities it purports to address. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]