Developing Wildlife Related Tourism for Game Management Sustainability in Georgia

Identifying true potentials for sustainable wildlife management starts with the confirmation of the disturbed status of the wildlife that requires changes in its management. Selecting measures to reverse degradation comes with understanding its evolution up to the appearance of the imbalance in exploitation. History of the human-wildlife relations helps the selection of critical points for intervention and the frames of favorable activities. In the case of this research, favorable activities are all those which can play a role in “a bite” for local communities to get involved in designing and implementing a new model of sustainable wildlife management. This paper presents the results of an exercise of exploring potentials for introducing wildlife-related economic activities into local communities in the Uravi Area under the Caucasus, Georgia. The one was selected to contribute to modeling local community involvement in the evolution towards improved wildlife management in Georgia. Both invasive and non-invasive utilization of the game through developing tourist products are explored as the potential to firmly substantiate wildlife management advancement. Natural and cultural heritages are both employed to design a few perspective wildlife related tourist products suitable for Georgia.