Volume: 13  Number: 6  Page: 529–545

Tea-sippers or Arsonists? Environmental NGOs and Their Responses to Protected Area Tourism: A Study of the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand

Brent Lovelock Department of Tourism, University of Otago, New Zealand

Environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) adopt a range of positions on the issue of tourism development within protected areas. While many ENGOs perceive tourism development as being extremely undesirable within protected areas, the forms of action that ENGOs actually take in response to such development vary. This paper discusses and analyses the responses of one ENGO (The Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society) to tourism within the protected areas of New Zealand. While the responses of ENGOs may be largely issue and organisation specific, there are broad influences at work that result in cross-national variation among the ways that ENGOs operate and relate their concerns about tourism. This paper briefly investigates these influences by comparing the actions of the New Zealand ENGO with those of a similar ENGO in Canada. The analysis contributes to an understanding of why in Canada much ENGO action within the national park–tourism policy domain has tended to be confrontational, whereas in New Zealand, this is not (yet?) the case.

Keywords: tourism, environmental NGO, New Zealand, protected areas

© 2005 B. Lovelock

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