ABSTRACT
The last chance to consume, collect, or photograph rare or exotic specimens is not a new phenomenon in leisure and tourism. Indeed, as Bowman and Pezzulo (2010) and Urry (2004) noted, many of the earliest tourist destinations were ‘often considered “places to die for” in the sense that one “must see” them before one dies’ (Bowman and Pezzulo 2010: 191). Places, contends Urry (2004), also die, ‘insofar as they either are exhausted in terms of their capacity to offer the experiences today's tourists want or else they become inhospitable to life due to earthquakes, volcanic activity, pollution, hurricanes, decay, and so forth’ (Urry cited in Bowman and Pezzulo 2010: 190). Yet, unlike these past experiences which were often confined to one species, one site, or one geographical region, last chance tourism provides the opportunity to witness the demise of ecosystems, to behold the extinction of an entire species from its natural habitat. Tourism of this nature is for all intents and purposes a chance to observe ecocide first-hand. Critics have also labelled last chance tourism as a short-term marketing ploy aimed at selling more guidebooks or increasing profits from destinations in potential demise. The ethics and motivations underlying this form of travel is what makes last chance tourism so interesting, particularly at a time when global climate-induced anthropogenic changes are proceeding at an alarming rate. After all, who would want to be the last individual to witness the tumble of the final glacier in Antarctica or Greenland; to observe the last breath of an emaciated polar bear in Churchill, Canada; to step on the last ice of Mt. Kilimanjaro? According to various researchers, including a number of authors featured in this book, many tourists concerned with vanishing destinations such as the Great Barrier Reef or disappearing wildlife such as mountain gorillas and polar bears are purchasing these last chance experiences (Agnew and Viner 2001; Amos 2001; Becken and Hay 2007; Hall and Higham 2005). As Nuttall (2010) noted during one of his excursions to Antarctica, the need to participate in last chance tourism should come as no surprise since visitors ‘are made to feel that they are travelling in an environment that is itself at risk.… under threat of disappearing, as the ice melts and yet another ice shelf collapses’ (p. 210). In other instances, travellers are advised to visit such national parks as Glacier, Joshua and Biscayne and Virgin Island in the USA, before the glaciers, the trees, and the coral reefs are gone (Shapley 2011).
