The CURA Ecotourism Stream has made great progress over the last year. Two NRES graduate students, Shane Hartman and Diana Kutzner, joined the CURA project in September 2006. Under guidance of supervisor and UNBC Ecotourism Stream Leader Dr. Pam Wright and Tl’azt’en Ecotourism Stream Leader Amelia Stark, both students have identified their areas of research, research questions and research methods. Shane Hartman is exploring the benefits and costs of tourism development on Tl’azt’en territory. During his research, he will work closely with community members to learn about several aspects of tourism development, including what benefits Tl’azt’en anticipate from tourism as well as which costs they are willing to bear.

Our second graduate student, Diana Kutzner, is researching tourists’ interest in tourism provided by First Nation communities in northern British Columbia. This spring, she interviewed various members of the indigenous tourism industry of northern B.C. and started conducting surveys with visitors to Prince George in the middle of June.

From her research, Diana anticipates to learn about visitors’ interest in indigenous tourism, and more specifically, what types of experiences visitors are looking for. She finishes her data collection in the end of September, after which she will begin to analyze the results.

While the graduate students were busy organizing the beginning of their research collection in the beginning of this summer, Tl’azt’en experienced a great opportunity to get a little taste of what tourism on their land could potentially look like. On June 2nd and 3rd, seven researchers and members of the 43rd Annual Moose Conference in Prince George came to Cinnabar Research Station in the John Prince Research Forest for the Pre-conference field trip. For a read of what happened that weekend, click here.