As a collaborative endeavor, the Indigenous Tourism and Biodiversity Website Award is the high point of a decade-plus conservation with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Oliver Hillel and numerous friends – indigenous and non-indigenous peoples – about the best ways to develop indigenous tourism. As a non-indigenous person myself, I ask what are the best ways that other non-indigenous peoples connect with individuals and communities who take pride in their indigenous heritage.

Raw Wildlife Encounters was born out Jessica McKelson’s passion for, and dedication to the conservation of Indonesia. One of the earth’s few remaining biodiversity hotspots, Tangkahan is home to some of the world’s most endangered wildlife including Sumatran Tigers, Orang-utans, Asia Rhinos and Asian Elephants. The region is perched on the edge of Gunung Leuser National Park, an area that has been disseminated by illegal logging for timber and to make way for oil palm plantations.

In 2009 Wayne Sentman initiated a novel CO2 offset program for the San Francisco based non-profit marine conservation organization, Oceanic Society. Wayne worked to form a partnership between Oceanic Society, a Boston Public School (Warren Prescott School), and a Harvard University, graduate student founded education non-profit, Quen.ch.

Darwin’s Enchanted Isles are one of our planets most precious and unique ecosystems, home to an extraordinary profusion of exotic, often endemic flora and fauna. Tourism to this remote volcanic archipelago is both part of the solution and also part of the problem. Humans have unwittingly brought alien species that compete with native plants and animals. The growing number of settlers migrating from the mainland of Ecuador to the islands has put pressure on a fragile environment that imperils the entire ecosystem. As a result in 2007, UNESCO declared Galapagos as a World Heritage Site at risk.