How do I find out when all the "celebrities" are converging on the Galapagos? I want to know so I can schedule my visit a month or so before they get there, to avoid the crowds, paparazzi, and the damage and destruction they will reek.

What I'd like to see is one of those "Celebs" step up and challenge the others NOT to go. Shouldn't be hard to get one of 'em to do it. They love to be attached to a cause. It's good for their image.

Interesting idea, f_klock.

This, of course, is the whole debate over when (if ever) it's appropriate, or even positive, to have tourists visit ecologically sensitive areas, versus just staying away for the good of the place.

Some educational trips are okay, if they leave the place for the better, raise awareness and funds (and I'd like to think anyone with ties to National Geographic fits that bill), but there's also a rush to see sensitive areas around the world before they're gone, thereby hastening their destruction.

I admit, I don't have all the answers. And no one offered me a free trip to the Galapagos Islands.

Many years ago (beginning of the 20th Century), John Muir and his compatriots decided that one of the best ways to educate the public was to get them out into the wilderness. So the Sierra Club (founded by Muir and others) instituted a series of trips, the main one being the High Trip. By the time I became acquainted with the Sierra Club in the 1950s (as a very young lad), the High Trips were run 3 or 4 times a summer and typically had 100 or more participants, including the packers who carried all the gear and food on mules and horses, except for the day packs that the other participants carried. Somewhere in the 1970s, the Club realized that this "horde of locusts" (as described by one of the Club Directors) was doing a lot of damage to the very areas they were trying to show people and protect. So the High Trips were discontinued. Other trip series have been continued, but with a smaller limit on participants - the Base Camps, Family Trips, and so on. The Club runs a number of "ecotourism" trips around the world, including to the Galapagos (at the same time, having at least one article a year in Sierra, the club magazine, decrying the impact of ecotourism).

So, it is a bit of a dilemma. Can you sufficiently educate and raise awareness with coffee-table books? Do you need to get people out into the areas to show them up close and personal what the areas are like? What impacts are you creating when you get the hordes of people on a ship going to Antarctica, or walking them around the Galapagos, or any of the other areas? What is the impact on polar bears when you drive up to a group of the bears in one of those arctic buses full of tourists snapping photos - does it show the risks of global warming (the bus meantime spewing CO2 and other exhaust gases) or does it add more to the problem?

No answers here, just questions that need to be asked. The most fundamental is how do you make people aware without causing a greater impact? A related question - if you are going to limit access, how do the people who get allowed access get selected - celebrities, those rich enough to pay the entry fee, scientists only, photographers, politicians looking for photo-ops?

It is a dilemma.

I'm not against all eco-tourism, but I do think we should each consider what positive, less impactful outdoor experiences we can have close to home on a regular basis, versus focusing on trophy trips to prestigious locales.

I don't know that there are any easy answers. I believe regular contact with nature is necessary and positive for everyone. I think we can get that in many different ways though and it doesn't have to mean we all go to "the last great places" just because we all want to, or think it's the thing to do.

As Bill, said, there are a lot of tough questions and no easy answers.

I sometimes show people pictures of places I have backpacked to, waterfalls, blue holes, overlooks, ravines, fog filled watersheds, etc.

I have been told several times, "Why would I want to go there now, I just saw a picture of it?"

Of course I reply: "You have to go there to really understand how great it is."

I don't know.....what do you do?