Evaluación preliminar del potencial ecoturístico y estrategia de implementación con fines de protección y conservación del bosque seco tropical (bs-t) en el municipio de Melgar- Tolima.

Abstract

Tourism is constituted as an activity of complex economic importance, which involves a large number of agents and various effects on the social and natural environment and other activities. This activity in recent years has shown an increase important that sees it as a wealth-generating activity, despite the detriment of the resources that it has at its disposal, in particular those of the natural order and that has forced, in different latitudes, to propose fresh forms of tourism execution, as the so-called ecotourism. In this research, the ecotourism potential that the municipality of Melgar (Tolima) can offer was evaluated based on conducting surveys to determine the community's perception of tourism, the search for secondary information on the established flora and fauna and to a greater extent from the study of the landscape and its scenic appeal, thus allowing the formulation of a strategy that allows local communities and populations, based on the knowledge of the natural capital of the municipality, an improvement in their living conditions and a diversification of their income while seeking the protection and conservation of the tropical dry forest, one of the most degraded, fragmented and least known ecosystems within the national territory. As a result, it is mainly the studies on the perception of people who presume that migrating from traditional tourism to nature tourism becomes the main challenge to achieve success in the implementation of ecotourism strategies for nature protection purposes in the town.