Move Over, Costa Rica

By Lauri Apple in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 6, 2008 4:30PM

Did you know that Chicago's an ecotourism destination? Neither did we, until we noticed that the Chicago Tourism Office's Website includes a page geared toward "ecotourists." We always thought ecotourism involved rain forests and other undeveloped habitats, not Donald Trump-made skyscrapers and potholes galore. Go figure!

Or maybe "Go greenwashers" is more like it. According to the International Ecotourism Society, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that purports to be the world's oldest and largest ecotourism association, "[r]esponsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people" = ecotourism. There's no way in hell that all of sprawling Chicago would qualify as a "natural area," so the city cites specific locations and attractions about town to make its point. Ecotourist attractions include:

• the Bike and Roll at Navy Pier
  
• the Bill Jarvis Migratory Bird Sanctuary
  
• Lots of farmers markets
  
• Garfield Conservatory, Shedd, McCormick Tribune Bridgehouse & Chicago River Museum, etc.
  
• Some local beaches and lagoons

While it’s true that many of these sites involve flora and fauna to some degree, they’re also either overtly commercial, contained in buildings ("eco behind closed doors"), or crowded. To put them in the same category as, say, the Poas Volcano in Costa Rica, or the Chalalán Ecolodge in Bolivia’s Madidi National Park, seems like a stretch, to say the least.