Nature-Positive Tourism: How Park Concessioners Can Give Back More Than They Take

Family camping. Image from the NPS's page.

The National Park Service's mission is to preserve the natural and cultural resources of the National Park System, unimpaired, for the enjoyment, education and inspiration of this and future generations. Those resources are what draw visitors, so protecting them means concession operations — the businesses that serve park visitors — should practice sustainable, nature-positive tourism. In April 2024 the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), with Animondial, published Nature Positive Travel & Tourism in Action; this page draws on it to show how concessioners can take part and where they can improve.

Why nature-positive

Tourism and nature are bound together: the Grand Canyon, clear lakes and active volcanoes are what bring people to national parks. Nature-positive tourism goes beyond minimizing harm to investing in restoring nature where tourism happens. An industry that depends on natural resources should help protect them — and visitors drawn by nature tend to want it protected for years to come.

A four-step roadmap

The Nature Positive Tourism Roadmap asks businesses to evaluate their operations in a continuing cycle:

1. Assess and define — review how operations affect animals and nature and contribute to biodiversity loss, and make nature-positive practice a priority.
2. Reduce and restore — identify specific actions to reduce harm, and give back more than you take from the place you operate.
3. Monitor and report — gather baseline data, then measure progress continuously; giving ownership of monitoring to the staff who do the work can make it less burdensome.
4. Collaborate and communicate — work with peers, suppliers, government and others toward shared goals, and share what works so others can use it.

Improving operations is ongoing, never finished. Concessioners are often at the forefront of environmental practice, but everyone can do more.

For concessioners

Concessioners meet visitors directly and shape their experience of a park. The NPS Green Parks Plan sets out how all stakeholders can take part in nature-positive tourism, and the Plastics Elimination and Reduction Plan explains each party's role in cutting plastic. Learn from others who have built sustainability into their work: the Glacier Green Team recycled about 6,300 pounds of glass in six months, and one concessioner cuts wildfire risk by turning food-service buckets into campground fire buckets.

The Nature Positive Vision for Travel & Tourism urges the industry to help governments, businesses and society carry out the Global Biodiversity Framework and change humanity's relationship with nature; the WTTC's Nature Positive Travel and Tourism Toolbox helps identify the drivers of biodiversity loss and ways to reduce them.

Sources

Based on "Nature Positive Tourism in Action," Commercial Services, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The roadmap it describes is the World Travel & Tourism Council's, summarized here in hubnx's own words.