Historically, ecotourism and nature-oriented tourism often took place in protected and remote regions – areas of exceptional beauty, ecological interest and cultural importance. These areas were established to conserve biodiversity and to halt the large-scale loss of natural ecosystems. In 1962, there were 1,000 protected areas covering 3% of the earth’s surface; in 2003, there were 102,100 covering 18.8 million square kilometers, or 11.5% of the earth’s land surface (Bushell, 2003) and they now encompass 15.4% of the earth’s land surface and 3.4% of oceans (IUCN-WCMC, 2014). The IUCN has pledged that these amounts will rise to at least 17% of land and 10% of marine areas by 2020. This chapter will provide an outline of protected areas and their often-complex relationship to the pressures and opportunities afforded by ecotourism. This pressure is due to the expansion of ecotourism and its commodification on a range of fronts, including:

the demands of overuse brought about by ‘overtourism’, which also call for ‘multiple use’ management that occurred in the past in parks that had to allow for extractive industries

the demands of neoliberal-based enterprise as lobby groups seek access for a wider range of tourism activities in a wider range of sensitive natural-resource management areas. These activities (e.g., four-wheel driving, horse riding, hunting, fishing, mountain biking, bushwalking and skiing) are now becoming apparent in a wider range of land areas due to new tourism trends such as ‘last-chance tourism’ (LCT) and the wider expectations of indigenous and local community groups for an active role in the ecotourism planning process.