A happy and, above all, peaceful new year to all of you, in fact a Happy International Year of Ecotourism. Although, I must admit, I fear the IYE celebrations card may be played too close by world bodies and bureaucracies while practitioners, small stake - holders and especially tourists will not know it ever was. It seems as if someone has added the word Consultants after the title, IYEConsultants. The IYE was not just an opportunity to celebrate Ecotourism Consultants, ladies and gentlemen, it was supposed to inspire tourists so that they actually travel to these places. Even the IYE logo is unsuitable, a clean-cut smirking white person looking with binoculars? is that all? Where are the communities and the issues? And was the logo chosen by the same people who chose the venue for the celebrations, Quebec? One wonders, could it have been held further away from people working in Central America, South America, Africa, Asia? OK, there are many (competing sometimes) regional ecotourism meetings in these places, but who do you think gets invited at these meetings, the communities or rather the same tourism fat cats and sharks? These are the perils of becoming mainstream too fast, brought about by those in the ecotourism family who were prepared to add a lot of water to their wine before even tasting it. But in any case, international years usually do not amount to much, on the contrary it is every day that counts. And if we do not like what we see, we can all declare our own international ecotourism day, every day. - The Editor.

Quotation of the month:
"There is a right to peaceful protest and we are exercising that right in the Antarctic. Our small inflatable boats pose no risk to the steel hulled high powered whale catchers. The catchers outweigh our boats by hundreds of times and tower over them. Simple disagreement is not terrorism. Signalling your disagreement is not terrorism. To call our peaceful protest terrorism is absurd"
- Gert Leipold of Greenpeace International, replying to "eco-terrorist" allegations from the Institute of Cetacean Research, Tokyo.