The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: October twelfth, on ruining the places we love.

Over the last five decades, travel and tourism has grown into one of the world's top industries, last year accounting for over four percent of earth's gross domestic product, more than healthcare or agriculture. Before World War Two, about one million people a year traveled to a different country; Italy now hosts that many visitors in one summer week. By 2010, it's estimated more than one billion travelers will make international trips each year.

These tidal waves of travelers inevitably change the places they love, for better and worse. Their presence can be a force for preservation, an economic engine to elevate impoverished areas, an incentive to resolve old conflicts. Yet they can also be a ruinous temptation, caustically destructive to both people and environments.

Individuals don't do the damage mass numbers do. Witness use of U.S. national forests. Since 1950, annual visitor-days have soared from 27 million to almost 500 million. All those hikers, bikers, campers, RVers and snow-mobilers have created a dilemma: how to protect and preserve the environment while promoting tourism. Forest managers, for example, recently proposed banning motorized vehicles from some public land, spawning a battle between visitors looking for quiet nature and locals love for engine-powered recreation.

No one answer works in every instance, but keeping unspoiled places that way takes self discipline and commitment, both on the part of their stewards and their visitors. Social carrying capacity must be balanced by social caring capacity.

There's an insightful discussion of the situation and solutions in the latest issue of National Geographic Traveler, a supporter of our program.

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