A camera-trap study in one of Laos’s best-known ecotourism areas found fewer mammals beside the trekking routes. Here is what the evidence does and does not show, and what to look for in a trek operator.
Nam Ha National Protected Area in northern Laos has run community-led treks and kayaking trips since the nineties, and its ecotourism project has won international awards. Between 2013 and 2019, camera traps at 59 sites across the reserve recorded an average of 4.58 medium and large mammal species at sites near the trekking and kayaking routes. Sites farther from tourism recorded almost twice as many. The study behind those figures, published in Global Ecology and Conservation and reported by Mongabay on 2 November, set out to test whether the scheme gives wildlife a refuge from hunting. The researchers found no sign of one in the animal counts, and that complicates a question every nature traveller eventually faces: does a well-run ecotour leave a forest better off, or does the presence of walkers change it?
The result can be read in more than one way. Some readers will see evidence that trekking pushes wildlife out of the forest. Others will point out that the same cameras detected fewer hunters at the tourism sites than in remote areas, although hunters were recorded at only 11 camera stations, so that part of the picture is thin. The study describes a pattern and cannot prove a cause, and its authors note that it was an observation and not an experiment.
Issue 32 of Unmasked Weekly reported the finding. This is our guide to judging an ecotour operator in Southeast Asia, using Nam Ha as the case. Mongabay’s report has the species lists and the researchers’ views, and it’s worth reading alongside this piece. Here we look at how the Nam Ha scheme was set up, what its own paperwork says about group sizes, wages and rules, and how a second Lao scheme pays villages in a different way. From there we set out the questions that help you decide for yourself whether an operator in Laos, Thailand, Vietnam or anywhere else in the region is doing the job well.
Why Nam Ha Is a Fair Test Case
Nam Ha is a hard place to pick on. The Nam Ha Ecotourism Project began in October 1999 as a partnership between UNESCO and the Lao National Tourism Administration. A second phase from March 2005 was funded by the governments of New Zealand and Laos and by UNESCO. The aim, according to a UNDP summary of the project published in 2012, was a community-based model that would take pressure off the forest, put money and jobs into villages and work elsewhere in Laos. It won the British Airways Tourism for Tomorrow Award in 2002 and the UNDP Equator Prize in 2006. The wider project covers 57 villages and 3,451 families, and the community treks themselves run through 17 host villages, where more than 100 local people worked as guides, cooks, craft makers and providers of transport and accommodation. The guide service alone paid communities more than US$600,000 between 1999 and the end of the period the summary covers. If a scheme with that record still leaves a gap in the forest, anyone selling you a “low-impact” trek somewhere less scrutinised should expect a few questions.
Sun bears were among the species the Nam Ha cameras recorded only in the quieter parts of the reserve. Photo: Wich’yanan L
The study, led by William Bleisch, is titled “Wildlife-friendly tourism is associated with lower wildlife availability in the Nam Ha National Protected Area”, and the word “associated” is doing real work. The cameras show a pattern. There were fewer mammal species along the routes where people walk and paddle and more in the quieter forest, with several species, among them Asian elephants and sun bears, recorded only away from tourism. Six species went the other way and appeared only where tourism takes place. A pattern isn’t a proven cause, and a camera can’t tell you whether the animals avoid walkers, the noise, the trails themselves, or never lived there to begin with. My own reading is a practical one. How many people walk through a forest, how often and how quietly sets part of its character for the animals that live in it, and the operator who decides those things has more say over the outcome than the traveller who books. That’s why the questions below are aimed at the operator and not at your behaviour on the trail.
Nam Ha was never meant to keep people out. The idea was to make a standing forest worth more to villagers than a hunted one, and the cameras offer some support, since fewer hunters were detected where tourists went. The detections were few, though, and the authors accept that hunters may simply have steered clear of tourist areas. What the scheme couldn’t do was make the forest feel unvisited. Someone who wants the busiest wildlife viewing and someone who wants hunters kept out of the same forest are asking for different things, and a trek operator should be able to tell you which of the two they’re selling.
Ask How Many People Walk, and How They Walk
The study’s authors advise monitoring and limiting the number of trekking groups, and training guides and tourists not to frighten wildlife, which is the advice Issue 32 passed on. Both turn into questions an ordinary traveller can ask. Group size comes first, because an operator can answer it in a sentence and the answer shows whether anyone has thought about the forest at all. The UNDP summary says Nam Ha groups are usually kept to fewer than ten people, that parties of four or more travel with three guides, and that operators work under rules limiting group sizes and weekly departures. It doesn’t give the cap itself, which is a fair reminder to ask for the number. The Global Sustainable Tourism Council’s tour operator standard expects operators to determine the size of tour groups and the frequency and timing of visits. If yours can’t give you a figure, or says it depends on bookings, nobody has set one.
After that, ask about the details that make up a day on the trail, because the cameras recorded the sum of all of them. How many groups share a path on the same day? Do departures run at staggered hours, or does everyone set off at eight? Will the guide stop and wait quietly if an animal is nearby, or push on to the viewpoint for the photographs? No study can tell you how one company behaves, but numbers, noise and timing are what a company controls and what a visitor can ask about before booking. The permit is worth a question too. The UNDP summary describes a trekking permit of US$1 per person per day*, charged on every tour whether or not it enters the protected area, and the Nam Ha website says orders from the provincial governor’s office cover tour group size, the use of trained guides and the collection of taxes and permit revenue. Ask whether the permit is in your price and ask for the receipt. *The US$1 permit figure comes from a UNDP summary published in 2012 and may have changed, so check the current charge.
The Nam Ha protected area’s website says visitors must book through a company in Luang Namtha town, and an undated list on the site names around 17 tour companies and four government tour service units, so you can put the same questions to several operators and compare the answers. Expect a fair answer to include a trade-off. Smaller groups cost more per head, three guides for a party of four isn’t cheap to staff, and an operator who quotes a higher price with a stated cap is giving you better information than one who quotes a bargain with none. A rock-bottom price sold through a chain of intermediaries nobody will name belongs to a different world from the Nam Ha model. Laos has been tightening its rules on so-called zero-dollar tours for that reason, a problem our piece on zero-dollar tourism in Laos explains in full.
Ask Who Is Paid, and What the Money Does
The economic logic in Nam Ha was simple. Pay villagers enough from visitors that hunting stops being the better deal. The UNDP summary shows what a clear answer looks like. Of the guide service’s revenue, food took 20 per cent and transport 16, with the remainder split between guides, accommodation, the trekking permit, a village development fund, provincial tax and administration. For 2006 the summary reports US$41,069 paid to local service providers out of US$56,940 in gross revenue, which works out at about 72 per cent by my arithmetic. Lead guides earned US$10 to US$15 a day, assistants US$9 and village guides US$5. Village accommodation was set at around US$2 a night, paid straight to the village, with part going to housekeepers and the rest to a fund for the lodge and communal needs. In 2006, 95 per cent of the guides came from ethnic minorities and 20 per cent were women. These numbers are up to two decades old and a dollar goes a different distance now, so I wouldn’t treat them as today’s position. They’re useful because they’re specific. A breakdown with percentages and day rates is a very different thing from a slogan about supporting local communities.
A village in Luang Namtha province, northern Laos.
So ask who guides the trek, and whether the guides come from the villages you’ll walk through. Ask whether they’re paid a day rate or a share, who sets the price of a night in a village, the village or the company, and what happens to the money after the village receives it. The GSTC standard expects operators to give preference to hiring local staff and to locally produced goods, and to have a system for local communities to raise grievances, so you’re asking for nothing unreasonable. If you want to know who you’ll be walking beside, our guide to ethnic minority encounters in Luang Namtha and Phongsali covers the cultural side of the same province.
A second Lao scheme shows how much further the question can go. In Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area, a different project paid villages a guaranteed amount per tourist, with a bonus for wildlife sightings, and cut the village payment by 25 per cent for a first hunting infraction, 50 per cent for a second and all of it for three or more. A peer-reviewed evaluation published in 2018 found hunting in the tourism sector was no higher in the fourth year than in the first, while the five areas without tourism saw it roughly triple, and sightings of the monitored species per boat rose from 2.80 to 4.56. The authors called their results preliminary, based on small samples, and noted that part of the rise in sightings could be animals getting used to boats. I wouldn’t hold it up as proof of anything. It does suggest one more question for an operator: is any of the money villages receive tied to the forest staying intact, or does the payment arrive whatever happens to the wildlife?
Ask About Wildlife, the Menu and the Paperwork
The GSTC standard is specific about animals. Operators should maintain viewing distances, avoid feeding or disturbing wildlife, and prevent any chasing, touching or manipulation of animals. Ask the company to put in writing what its guides do when an animal appears. A promise of guaranteed sightings is a warning sign, and the Nam Et-Phou Louey bonus doesn’t contradict that. A payment to a village for a sighting is written into a contract and rewards protecting the forest. A guarantee from a company means somebody will be tempted to produce an animal on schedule, and a forest in good condition doesn’t run to a timetable. The Nam Ha cameras found fewer species along the trails, so be wary of anyone promising you a crowded forest.
Then ask about the menu. The UNDP summary lists a prohibition on wildlife consumption and a requirement to use only village-produced food among the rules operators work under, and the Nam Ha website asks visitors not to buy or consume wildlife products, not to take plants out of the protected area and to carry all rubbish out. Put the question to your operator directly: does any village meal include wild meat, and what does the guide do if a trekker is offered it? A good guide will have an answer ready. Rules on paper are only a start. The same summary notes that private investors had cleared forest for rubber and that enforcement was undermined by a lack of resources, a reminder that a rule is worth what its enforcement is worth. Ask how the company knows its own rules are followed and who checks.
Paperwork comes last. Certificates help up to a point, and our guide to hotel sustainability labels explains how far to trust them, while our report on the EU’s greenwashing crackdown shows why vague green claims are getting harder to make. For a trek, ask for the group cap in writing, an itinerary that names the villages and says what share of the price stays there, the permit receipt, a behaviour briefing before you arrive and a way to complain afterwards. The GSTC standard expects operators to give customers clear guidance on appropriate behaviour and to run a customer feedback system, so this isn’t an unusual request. Pay attention to how fast the reply comes and how specific it is. A company that has answered these questions before tends to answer them quickly.
Go back to the 4.58. The cameras found fewer species where people walk and fewer hunters too, and nothing in the study tells you how much any single trek adds to the gap. Judging an operator won’t settle that debate, but it’s the one decision in your hands, and it moves money towards the companies that can show their working. Email the questions before you book and read the replies as closely as you read the brochure. If the answers are vague, there are plenty of other operators in the region to ask.
Further Reading
- Thailand’s Elephant Tourism Still Failing. Here’s How to Visit Without Making It Worse.
- The Philippines Has Two Ways to Watch Whale Sharks Yet Only One Holds Up to Scrutiny.
- The Animal Nobody Has Seen: Inside Laos’s Bid to Save the Park It Barely Shows Anyone
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