Towns and Wildlife Centers

There is no doubt, small businesses in the United States have suffered the past couple decades. This is due to the death of the town center, which coincides, with the mass growth of retail parks, and chain department stores. This is not the case for every town however. Many towns in the Adirondacks rely solely on tourism. On our past tour of the Adirondacks this past weekend we drove through many of these towns. The recession certainly hit them hard, buildings are boarded up, and other ramshackle structures are collapsing. The obvious cure to this problem is to gain back industry from tourism. If it were that simple though we would not have seen these impoverished towns. Nature provides tourism, especially in a place as special as the Adirondacks, however you can’t have nature in a town the two contradict themselves. Our professor suggested we think whether the nearby multi million dollar wild life facility, should be closer to its neighboring town, or if those multi millions should have been invested in the wildlife center. The nature center is beautiful and its distance from the town adds to its natural feel. Its location is better for the town in the end, by creating a popular tourist attraction

Like it or not we live in a capitalist society. Not everyone can be successful. There are well off towns and not well off towns. If we went around spending millions of dollars trying to save them we would bankrupt a lot of the NGO’s that work to save what is left of nature in this country. To have a wildlife center not surrounded by nature would not be profitable as a wildlife center and therefore a bad investment for the NGO’s that did give them the money. The money from these organizations would have never gone directly to the town. But now because there is a tourist attraction near the town there will be jobs. Even if people go to the center and then drive through the town, someone still needs to work for the center. The center creates a perfect tourist option by being in nature, and by being a successful tourist attraction it creates jobs for the struggling locals. Who in turn can put their money back into the town and begin to rebuild the town.