
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 19, 1994                   TAG: 9411020015
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NOEL KEMPFF NATIONAL PARK, BOLIVIA                                 LENGTH: Medium

BOLIVIA TURNS TO ECO-TOURISM TO CAPITALIZE ON WILDERNESS

The Bolivian government is teaming up with private investors to build a program of ``ecological tourism'' it hopes will bring in $1 billion a year. An important part of the plan is this huge wilderness park, the size of West Virginia, carved out of a remote area on the border with Brazil in 1976.

During a boat trip on the Guapore River, through dense rain forest, a group of environmental scientists and other visitors saw 60 species of birds, dozens of types of orchids, crocodiles and river otters.

The park, named for a Bolivian scientist murdered by drug traffickers in 1986, contains more than 500 species of birds, as many as all North America, said Guy Cox, a British ornithologist studying at Louisiana State University.

Cox is investigating the effects of logging in adjacent areas on the bird population. The project is financed by the Nature Conservancy of Arlington, Va., and the Parks in Peril program of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

``Bolivia is among the countries with the most diversity in the world, with over 40 percent of the bird species of South America found within its boundaries,'' Cox said, following a macaw with his binoculars.

Visitors to the park fly from Santa Cruz across nearly 400 miles of farmland and forests to a camp run by the Friends of Nature Foundation. The foundation built the comfortable Flor de Oro base camp on the Guapore, which forms part of the frontier with Brazil. It also has trained forest rangers and established trails and campsites.

One function of the rangers is to keep out Brazilian loggers who used to cross the Guapore and cut down mahogany trees, and drug gangs who once had cocaine labs in the park. Kempff was killed when he landed at an airstrip controlled by traffickers.

``This park has become an ecological buffer zone,'' said Hermes Justiniano, a nature photographer who directs the foundation. On the Brazilian side of the river, the rain forest has been virtually obliterated by loggers and settlers.

For the tourism development program in national parks, ``the government will provide the basic infrastructure needed for tourism, while the private sector will provide the basic services,'' said Ricardo Rojas, secretary of tourism.

He hopes to attract at least $300 million of foreign investment by 1997 and generate $1 billion a year in foreign exchange - equal to Bolivia's current legal export earnings - within a decade.

Memo: longer version ran in the State edition

by CNB