[Coral-List] Coral reefs importance brainstorm
Richard E. Dodge
dodge at nova.edu
Sun Aug 17 09:00:58 EDT 2003
Dear All,
For a good summary of the economics of reefs of Southeast Florida and the
Keys (Monroe, Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties), go to:
http://www.co.broward.fl.us/bri01700.htm
and click the Executive Summary.
Sincerely,
Dick
At 20:32 8/16/2003 -0500, John Meaker wrote:
>On Sun, 17 Aug 2003, Doug Fenner wrote:
>
> > Good question. Tell them cold hard money, cash and heaps of it. I
> think I
> > read that the Florida Keys bring in 6 billion dollars a year in tourism
> > revenues. That's billion with a B.
>
> I'm wondering where you are getting your figures. Leeworthy and
>Wiley[1] only attribute 1.2 billion to the entire tourism industry in the
>Keys. That figure includes everything from visitors who come for the reef
>to those who visit for Fantasy Fest. When you look at their figures, more
>money (by far) is spent by tourists in the bars than on the reefs. I
>suspect that in dive resort destinations that the numbers are the opposite
>and more money is spent on diving than entertainment.
>
> Sure, there is a cross pollination and divers do go to the bars
>and the party hearty crowd does visit the reef. However, to say that
>*all* of that 1.2 billion can be attributed to a healthy coral ecosystem
>is as foolish as saying that it can *all* be attributed to Jimmy Buffett
>and his promotion of the Keys lifestyle that *never* really did exist.
>
> > So why isn't the tourism industry putting some serious money into
> > finding out what's going wrong and fixing it? Not just a couple dollars
> > here and a couple there. Its their income that's on the line. -Doug
>
> Perhaps because they don't really believe that tourism is
>dependent on healthy reefs? In areas where the people *do* believe that
>tourism is dependent on a healthy ecosystem, the locals seem to be much
>more involved in trying to preserve the reefs.
>
> Please don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that we need to do
>something to preserve the ecosystem. But I don't believe that using
>figures that are so easily shot down do much to bolster our position.
>Preserving the ecosystem is much more important than the short term
>economic gai of "this tourist season" and we need to stress that. What's
>that old cliche? "The Earth does not belong to us; we belong to the
>Earth"
>
>--
> John.
>
>[1] Leeworthy, Vernon R. and Peter C. Wiley, 2002, "Profiles and
> Economic Contribution: General VIsitors to Monroe County, Florida
> 2000 - 2001" published by NOAA, Washington, DC.
>
>
>
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