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Sustainable tourism
The Tarkine is a very special place recognised for its outstanding global and national significance, both natural and cultural.
Your experience of the Tarkine should evoke a sense of respect and understanding for the fragility of this unique environment.
ecotourism is the responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people - quoted by the International Ecotourism Society
Your impact whilst visiting
We encourage visitors to do their part in maintaining and improving the natural condition of this amazing part of the world. Please take personal responsibility for your impact during your visit and find ways to volunteer or contribute to the future biodiversity of the Tarkine.
your carbon footprint is the measure of the impact your activities have on the environment
Please contact us if you wish to know more about how you can contribute, or move across to the "Your footprint" page to find out more in how you can reduce your carbon footprint whilst visiting the Tarkine.
Green Tourism
Our vision for tourism in the Tarkine is that all experiences should provide powerful connections with wild places and be well managed and sustainable into the future.
Our guiding principles for green tourism are;
- Sustainable numbers of visitors
- High financial returns to the economy to allow protection and improvement of the natural environment
- Encouragement for operators to adopt Environmentally Sustainable Development principles and practices
- Recognition that the Tarkine as a place is the key asset and its wilderness is to be managed carefully and sustainably
- Use of existing access and infrastructure to strengthen the viability of the Tarkine as a nature based destination
- Protection and enhancement of the core assets and values of the Tarkine to deliver sustainable and socially acceptable outcomes for local communities
Please contact us if you wish to gain green accreditation for your Tarkine based tourism business – we will point you in the right direction.
Tarkine Carbon
The Tarkine contains Australia’s largest tracts of cool temperate rainforest and some of the most ancient species of Australia’s flora. Many of the Tarkine’s trees evolved from ancestors dating back to over 60 million years ago when the southern continents were joined together as a landmass called Gondwana. Some of these trees are Leatherwood, Celery-top Pine, Sassafras, Huon Pine and Myrtle.
The Nothofagus (Myrtle) old growth forests of the Tarkine provide a huge carbon store. Preliminary figures estimate that these forests may contain around 400 tonnes of carbon per hectare (above ground) and potentially 300 tonnes of carbon per hectare for soil carbon (below ground). It’s not just the Myrtle rainforest that hold precious carbon, the oldgrowth Eucalyptus forests of the Tarkine contain even more carbon per hectare.
This makes the Tarkine rainforests perhaps one of the richest natural carbon sinks in Australia, holding over 100 million tonnes of carbon – a highly valuable asset in today’s world of climate change. (for more information see our corporate page)
Given the vital role the Tarkine forests play in storing carbon, we encourage you to seek opportunities to reduce your carbon footprint when you visit. We suggest that you use a carbon calculator when planning your trip to see if you can reduce the carbon impact of your visit and seek carbon offset options.
To find out more visit:
- climatepositive.org (a positive step to reduce global warming)
- crctourism.com.au (a detailed carbon calculator)
Our website
We have taken a responsible approach in reducing our carbon footprint, but more so we have worked with greenskin media in making sure we have a close to carbon neutral website.
With the professional guidance and "green tinge" of greenskin media we have done the following:
- placed our website on a carbon neutral hosting platform established on Australian soil
- minimised energy hungry website functionality, for example flash
- used a minimalist layout approach with clean code, further reducing cpu energy consumption
- the presence of our brochures online as optimised pdfs
- an online newsletter
- a micro-website version of our website for energy efficient mobile devices, like the iPhone (this is still in progress)
