Wilderness Journeys

Last updated

Tour Operator
Industry Tourism
Founded2000
Headquarters Edinburgh, Scotland
Key people
Neil Birnie, Co-Founder and director
Stevie Christie, director
Paul Easto, director
ProductsSmall group adventures
Number of employees
6 core staff and several guides
Website www.wildernessjourneys.com   Blue pencil.svg

Wilderness Journeys is an adventure travel and ecotourism company.

Adventure travel type of niche tourism

Adventure travel is a type of niche tourism, involving exploration or travel with a certain degree of risk, and which may require special skills and physical exertion. In the United States, adventure tourism has grown in recent decades as tourists seek out-of-the-ordinary or "roads less traveled" vacations, but lack of a clear operational definition has hampered measurement of market size and growth. According to the U.S.-based Adventure Travel Trade Association, adventure travel may be any tourist activity that includes physical activity, a cultural exchange, and connection with nature.

Contents

The company

Wilderness Journeys was founded in September 2000 to provide sustainable tourism, allowing tourists to meet local people and experience their customs and culture.

Sustainable tourism is the concept of visiting somewhere as a tourist and trying to make a positive impact on the environment, society, and economy. Tourism can involve primary transportation to the general location, local transportation, accommodations, entertainment, recreation, nourishment and shopping. It can be related to travel for leisure, business and what is called VFR. There is now broad consensus that tourism development should be sustainable; however, the question of how to achieve this remains an object of debate.

Wilderness Journeys is the first UK operator to feature the new Koiyaki Wilderness Camp, which has been set up to provide revenue for the Koiyaki Guiding School. The camp is the first community-owned ecolodge in the wild north of the Masai Mara.

Wilderness Journeys works on community conservation in Northern Kenya [1] to help create a network of community-managed wildlife conservancies from the eastern escarpments of the Great Rift Valley to the lower reaches of the Tana River.

East African Rift An active continental rift zone in East Africa

The East African Rift (EAR) is an active continental rift zone in East Africa. The EAR began developing around the onset of the Miocene, 22–25 million years ago. In the past it was considered to be part of a larger Great Rift Valley that extended north to Asia Minor.

Tana River (Kenya) river of Kenya

The 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) long Tana River is the longest river in Kenya, and gives its name to the Tana River County. Its tributaries include the Thika, as well as several smaller rivers that flow only during the rainy season. The river rises in the Aberdare Mountains to the west of Nyeri. Initially it runs east before turning south around the massif of Mount Kenya. The river then runs into the Masinga Reservoir and Kiambere Reservoir, created by Masinga and Kiambere dams respectively]. Masinga and Kiambere reservoirs serve a dual purpose, hydro-electric power (HEP) generation and agricultural irrigation. Three further dams are located between Masinga and Kiambere, namely Kamburu, Gitaru and Kindaruma, that are used exclusively for HEP generation. Below the dams, the river turns north and flows along the north-south boundary between the Meru and North Kitui and Bisanadi, Kora and Rabole National Reserves. In the reserves the river turns east, and then south east. It passes through the towns of Garissa, Hola and Garsen before entering the Indian Ocean at the Ungwana Bay-Kipini area, at the end of a river delta that reaches roughly 30 km upstream from the river mouth itself. It runs through a desert, and irrigates the surrounding land.

In 2009, Wilderness Journeys became the first UK operator to run trips in the Serengeti in Tanzania, notable for the annual migration of wildebeest [2]

Serengeti geographical region in Africa

The Serengeti ecosystem is a geographical region in Africa. It is located in northern Tanzania. It spans approximately 30,000 km2 (12,000 sq mi).

Tanzania Country in Africa

Tanzania officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in eastern Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands at the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to the south; Zambia to the southwest; and Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, is in north-eastern Tanzania.

Wildebeest antelope of the genus Connochaetes

The wildebeest, also called the gnu is an antelope in the genus Connochaetes. It belongs to the family Bovidae, which includes antelopes, cattle, goats, sheep, and other even-toed horned ungulates. Connochaetes includes two species, both native to Africa: the black wildebeest or white-tailed gnu, and the blue wildebeest or brindled gnu. Fossil records suggest these two species diverged about one million years ago, resulting in a northern and a southern species. The blue wildebeest remained in its original range and changed very little from the ancestral species, while the black wildebeest changed more as adaptation to its open grassland habitat in the south. The most obvious way of telling the two species apart are the differences in their colouring and in the way their horns are oriented.

Awards

Wilderness Journeys was named a Highly Commended Tour Operator in the 2006 World Responsible Travel Awards and as the top UK’s company in the 2008 Guardian Ethical Travel Awards. [3]

Nature Conservation Projects

Wilderness Journeys works with the Wilderness Foundation UK, [4] a wilderness conservation organization. Together they have set up an Environment & Community Fund which provides financial support and consultancy to conservation and tourism development projects around the world.

References

  1. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 3 January 2009. Retrieved 3 November 2008.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)
  2. ↑ Observer, 1 March 2009, Serengeti
  3. ↑ Ethical Travel Award, The Observer 19 October 2008
  4. ↑ Wilderness Foundation UK
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.