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The following e-mail message was received by WDFW Director Jeff Koenings
From: Chuck Gibilisco (WDFW Watchable Wildlife) To: Jeff Koenings Date: 02/28/2003 9:34 AM Subject: A real test for community tourism development Hello Jeff, I thought you might be interested to know that I will be working for the Royal Government of Bhutan for the next several weeks using many of the techniques and processes that WDFW and partners have developed for assessing nature tourism opportunities and sites that benefit the resource and the human communities. Bhutan has heard about our unique project along the Coulee Corridor (Othello to Grand Coulee) and other community and project efforts that the Watchable Wildlife Section has pioneered in Washington. I will be lead consultant working with a team of Bhutanese officials to apply what WDFW has developed but instead of Othello it will be used in some very rural areas of southern Bhutan (7-8 households) within the boundaries of the Black Mountain National Park. The general idea is to keep people on the land and to use nature tourism to integrate development that will benefit both the people and the resource and involve the local people as real partners from the beginning. I think this fits nicely with your comments about working with rural communities, although this is somewhat removed from our normal operating area. I will return in April with what I hope are many exciting success stories and many ways to apply them to the Washington situation. Side note: Bhutan is one of the 10 internationally designated most biologically diverse areas in the world. The country is smaller than Vermon and New Hampshire combined but has more than 600 species of birds and 200 species of rhododendrons, etc. Sincerely,
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