Transforming travel.

'Eco-tourism' Is More Than a Buzzword; It's a Seismic Shift in a Trillion-Dollar Industry

Vacations were never like this. At the start of another sparkling morning in Maho Bay Camps in the U.S. Virgin Islands, you arise refreshed in your low-Earth-impact "eco-tent," elevated on a boardwalk in the midst of dense native vegetation. You stroll down to the open air pavilion where healthy foods are laid out in profusion. Across the bay you catch sight of Harmony, a second resort built entirely of recycled materials and operating solely on sun and wind power. After breakfast, you glance at the program for the morning session of the Ecolodge Development Forum and Field Seminar. Oh, good, Ralf Buckley of Australia's International Center for Eco-tourism Research is speaking.

Welcome to 90s-style eco-tourism, where western travelers can soak up sun and absorb local color without a terrible case of the guilts. This new phenomenon amounts to a seismic shift in the economically important world of tourism, which employs 127 million people around the world (six million of them in the U.S.) and accounts for $3.5 trillion in annual business.

In 1990, E wrote that eco-tourism, an offshoot of the adventure travel industry, was "the latest buzzword in organized travel." It's much more than a buzzword now. If anything, eco-tourism is a victim of its own success, as every tourism operator in the world starts to talk the talk, if not necessarily walk the walk. Even major hotel operators are signing on to "green" their operations from top to bottom. The international magazine Green Hotelier, published in London, will debut this spring.

According to Megan Eppler Wood, executive director of the Vermont-based Eco-tourism Society, "People say that eco-tourism is just a fad, a passing thing, but it's much more than that. It's a fundamental restructuring of how a certain segment of the industry does business."

The "old" model for "get-away-from-it-all" tourism is clear enough. Hotel chains, almost always foreign-owned, bought paradise for a song from the indigenous owners, built elaborate, energy-squandering, polluting resorts with western architects, workers and staff, then walled them off from any significant contact with local populations or culture (aside from the poolside calypso band playing "Sloop John B").

The new model aims at both environmental responsibility and respect for - as well as involvement in - the host community. The Eco-tourism Society's definition, "Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of the local people," is as good as any.

For David Schaefer of Park East Tours, who's working on a book about eco-tourism, the green dye should soak through to every aspect of the operation. "Are local people being paid livable wages and allowed to participate in the enterprise?" he asks. "Are they involved in management? Is food, including fruits and vegetables, being purchased locally? Were locals involved in the construction projects? Is furniture locally purchased? Are structures biodegradable? Are guides thoroughly educated and are they educating tourists? Is access to environmentally sensitive areas being carefully controlled?"

Obviously, adhering to guidelines like these would require an expensive, top-to-bottom restructuring for many resort owners and hoteliers. It's far easier to simply print a brochure on recycled paper, open up a few hiking trails, and call what you do eco-tourism. But, according to Jonathan Soper of the Intercontinental Hotels Group, "enlightened self interest" can be a motivator for bottom-line entrepreneurs who see their business growing the greener they get. Intercontinental has published a 220-page operating manual for eco-correct hotels that has led to everything from garbage recycling in Oman to CFC-free refrigerant in Paris' mini bars.

One resort that strives to put principle into practice is Turnberry Isle in Aventura, Florida. Turnberry hired a staff environmentalist in 1992, and now recycles 18 tons of office paper per year, plus 72 tons of cardboard, and 135 tons of glass, plastic, aluminum and steel. Says Recycling Coordinator Dorothy Lewis, "Turnberry's recycling policy is all about participation...expanding the campaign from a small cadre of the committed to wider and wider circles of volunteers."

Confusion Rules

Still, there's a lot of confusion of terms. "The phrase 'eco-tourism' is so frequently misused as to have lost all meaning," Schaefer asserts. "Eco-tourism is difficult to define, but it's a blend of economics and ecology. It has to involve the local people; if they don't benefit from it, they won't support it."

The best eco-tourism opportunities are being built from the ground up, and are stretching the concept of what constitutes a "vacation" in the first place. Instead of lying on a beach and baking, eco-tourists are researching blue whale habitat and activities around the Mingan Islands off Quebec, experimenting with herbal remedies for AIDS in Kenya, biking through the countryside of Southern China and exploring Buddhist monasteries in Ladakh on a trek through the Himalayas. While some of these trips have had negative environmental consequences - western hikers in Nepal have, unwittingly, contributed to deforestation there because of a demand for firewood to warm up their campsites - most of the rest work with local cultures and support local economies.

Lisa Tabb, publisher of the new-in-1994 eco-traveler, says she sees a dramatic increase in new eco-tourism opportunities. "In the last year and a half, many more international and domestic destinations have been added. States and countries are using this as a new vehicle to generate income and visitors." Tabb recently returned from an eco-tourism conference in Australia, where representatives of both the Japan Tourist Bureau and Samoan Tourist Board solicited business from the travel agent delegates.

Tabb recognizes the many new programs that feature cultural exchanges - for instance, American farmers or doctors meeting their counterparts in Asia - but she sees the real growth area to be environmentally sensitive resorts like the Virgin Islands' Maho Bay and wildlife-respecting safari tours in Africa (see sidebar).

Adventure Still Key

Adventure is still a big part of eco-tourism: People who care about the environment usually don't want a sit-on-your-butt vacation. One such stimulating time is provided by REI Adventures of Sumner, Washington (the travel arm of Recreational Equipment, Inc.), which conducts 17-day bicycle tours through southern China. "The subtropical topography is really beautiful," says Mary Mehlberg of REI, "and cycling gives you a one-on-one contact with the people - who are divided into 11 distinct minority groups. You go at your own pace, depending on what the group wants to do." There are three departures in 1995.

Another kind of adventure is offered by International Journeys (IJ) of Fort Myers Beach, Florida: eight-day Amazon journeys on board the 90-foot El Arca river-boat guided by university-based wildlife biologists. The trip isn't all that strenuous - the cabins are air-conditioned - and eco-tourists get to see such wonders as pink dolphins, toucans and three-toed sloths.

The Amazon trip includes visits to "self sufficient" native villages, where participants can trade their trinkets for the local handicrafts (or "paddle in dugout canoes with the local children"), raising the quite real possibility that those societies will be corrupted in the process. Cindy Smith, IJ tour manager, says the company tries to lessen the cultural impact. "We do encourage the people to retain their culture and ways of doing things. But [contacting us] is their choice, not something we're thrusting on them. We also tell the people on our trips to not just make handouts. There needs to be trade and barter, so they know they're not getting something for nothing."

Sensitivity helps, but eco-tourism does impact indigenous cultures, and often negatively. The 1,700-acre Manuel Antonio National Park in Costa Rica - in the heart of the tropical rainforest - gets nearly a thousand visitors a day, and the surrounding hotel "strip" is now a major employer. More than 300 once-wild monkeys have become garbage feeders. In India's Thar Desert, tourists are ferried to their camel safaris in 4 x 4 Jeeps and snake charmers now perform for the cameras, while their neighbors hawk Coca-Cola.

In addition to the human corruption, there's the danger of exploiting the very animals eco-tourists most admire. Swim-with-the-dolphins programs have grown enormously since the mid-80s, but a National Marine Fisheries Service report issued last year takes issue with the stressful conditions captive dolphins live under, and notes more than a dozen injuries to participants, ranging from a cracked sternum to a broken arm.

Natural Habitat Wildlife Adventures of Sussex, New Jersey takes travellers in tundra buggies to see Hudson Bay polar bears. Asked if the constant motorized traffic upsets the bears, Marketing Director Lee-Ann McKenzie said, "We're the ones in a cage. The animals are not at risk." Visitors are encouraged to enjoy the birds, ranging from herons to hawks, at Little Saint Simons Island in Georgia, but spokeswoman Kristine Stanski says, "The people who come here are nature lovers. They disturb the land and animals as little as possible." The most common defense is presented by Lucy Wallingford of Slickrock Adventures, which takes the intrepid rafting on the "River of the Sacred Monkey" in Mexico. "We're just floating by; we're not affecting the wildlife in any way," she said.

Writing in Travel Holiday, veteran tour guide author Arthur Frommer offers a practical scenario for serious travelers. "Real eco-tourism utilizes the travel facilities created by the native population," he says. "It eschews international hotel chains in favor of properties owned and managed by locals. Adherents dine not on steaks and wine flown in from abroad, but on regional dishes, supporting the community's economy. Finally, eco-tourism respects not only the local environment, but the native culture of an area."

Done right, eco-tourism can certainly make the environment very relevant to indigenous populations around the world, giving them a personal and economic stake in preserving wildlife and wild places. It's an important mission and, as David Schaeffer puts it, "The travel agents just translate 'eco-tourism' as meaning nature trips, but that's only part of it. We're really talking about sustaining global wildlife and the environment through tourism."

Contact: The Eco-tourism Society, P.O. Box 755, North Bennington, VT 05257/[phone]; International Journeys, Inc., 17849 San Carlos Boulevard, Fort Myers, FL 33931/[phone]; REI Adventures, P.O. Box 1938, Sumner, WA 98390/[phone]; Natural Habitat Wildlife Adventures, One Sussex Station, Sussex, NJ 07461/[phone].

RELATED ARTICLE: Africa Awakes

Ecotourism Offers High Hopes to a South Africa Finally Free of Apartheid

South Africa, freed from the apartheid system that kept all foreign visitors down to a tiny trickle, is now experiencing a huge rebirth of its tourist industry. Last November, E investigated a country determined to put a green foot forward. South Africa's unique wildlife heritage gives it a distinct advantage, and nearly everyone in the country now recognizes that the advantage will be gone if the last lion is killed as a "pest," and the last rhino poached for its highly regarded horn. Just as important, of course, is preserving the wild areas that constitute the animals' habitat.

The trip began north of Johannesburg at Sun City, the site of a three-day eco-tourism conference sponsored by the Africa Travel Association and the South African Tourism Board (SATOUR). Raiders of the Lost Ark is not just a movie; its 40s-style adventure serial sets have taken physical reality at Sun City, the casino/pleasure dome that rises like a mirage in what was once an apartheid "homeland" known as the Republic of Boputhatswana, but is now just another province of South Africa.

Much is different in South Africa since the election of Nelson Mandela last May, but Sun City hasn't changed course; there's just more of it. GEO Gerard Inzerillo, a quintessential New Yorker who was once a partner of Ian Schrager and the late Steve Rubell (remember Studio 54?), has overseen a dramatic expansion that included building a Spielberg-esque "Lost City," complete with a columned and domed hotel, artfully simulated "ruins," an artificial beach with machine-generated waves, and even massive stone temples guarded by fire-breathing leopards and long-tusked elephants. Oriental tourists love it; their clicking cameras merge with tape-recorded lion roars and the pounding of the pseudo surf to create a unique Sun City cacophony.

Sun City, where more than a million trees have been planted to create a tropical rainforest in the midst of an arid bush, is almost totally without water of its own. Its vital link is an 18-mile-long pipeline to the Vaal River large enough to supply the dozens of fountains, pools and lakes, plus the needs of thousands of tourists. Either from environmental concern or out of necessity, Sun City reuses its waste water for irrigation and recycles its paper and glass.

That pipeline, enabling dry scrub land to bloom, reveals South Africa's delicate ecosystem in all its beauty and fragility. Cape Town's vast townships and squatter camps, home to almost half its population, are a tribute to the disruption of the country's human ecology, but the natural environment is just as threatened.

South Africa is still not on the average American tourist's radar map. It's a 20-hour plane flight from the East Coast, for one thing, and memories of the apartheid-prompted boycotts and general atmosphere of unrest linger as a deterrent. Tourism is South Africa's fourth largest industry, employing one in 25 workers, but the visitors are mainly from Europe and the Far East. Now that South Africa's been liberated that may change, but the message is only slowly getting through to the notoriously cautious American traveler.

Maybe one of the reasons South Africa has been the scene of such a struggle for dominance is its great natural advantages. Far more than any other African country, it is home to vast diamond, gold and mineral resources (including most of the world's chromium). Flora and fauna are staggeringly abundant. South Africa has more than 870 bird species, for instance - one tenth of those known to man - and 290 species of mammal, including the much-sought-after "Big Five" - elephants, rhinos (including almost all the White Rhinos), leopards, lions and buffalos. Where once Hemingway shot them from a Land Rover, you can now shoot them with a 300-millimeter lens.

There are 17 enormous national parks in South Africa - one alone, Kruger in the Northeast, is the size of Massachusetts. The 360-square-mile Pilanesberg Reserve is only a few miles from Sun City. Pilanesberg seemed almost like Central Wildlife Station, so plentiful were the creatures seen within its borders.

Pilanesberg did raise some questions, since many of the larger mammals in the park had been hunted to local extinction decades before and were only recently "stocked" from other parts of Africa. Is this different, say, than the type of New Jersey Big Game Safari so movingly parodied by T. Coraghessan Boyle in a recent short story? Actually, it is different, because all the animals are native to Pilanesberg and only temporarily gave up their leases. Ironically, while encouraging indigenous residents, many South African game parks fight determined battles with non-native plants and animals, which threaten to crowd out the original tenants.

If South Africa is going to build a North American tourist base, it will have to preserve its natural resources for them to see and experience. There are, after all, beautiful beaches everywhere, but only Africa's got the Big Five on home turf. Dr. Ian Player (brother of Gary Player, the internationally known golfer), is a noted conservationist credited with saving the white rhino. He spoke for many of his countrymen when he told the conference, "In the Western world, the policy has been to subdue everything wild. But Africa can show the world a new way. People have grown weary of travel without purpose. We need to reintroduce the concept of travel as a pilgrimage, so it will have meaning again. Feel the rhythm of this land!"

Player says that, because elephant populations have stabilized and are actually increasing in South Africa, it's time to reintroduce "culling" of the herds to prevent vast damage to plant life. Elephants are, you see, messy eaters and tend to uproot whole trees rather than nibble on leaves. They're also, believe it or not, something of a threat to humans. "Try telling a woman who is barely eking out an existence on a tiny plot that she should preserve the elephants who trample her crops," writes Raymond Bonnet in his book At the Hand of Man. Bonnet accuses westerners of acting "as if the elephant existed in some kind of human-free environment."

As Africa's population dramatically expands - from 100 million people at the turn of the century to 450 million today - elephants have been concentrated in smaller and smaller reserves, which has put corresponding pressure on the available food supply. Last fall, post-apartheid South Africa formally petitioned the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to again allow commercial trade in elephant body parts - hides and meat, but not ivory.

This view is, needless to say, controversial in North America, and was rejected at the CITES conference in November. "This is tragic at a time when the very survival of the elephant is at stake," says Paul Siegel, director of animal welfare at the International Fund for Animal Welfare. (IFAW). The Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) backs that position up with statistics: Between 1979 and 1989, it says, more than half of Africa's elephants were killed for their ivory, and more than 90 percent of the so-called legal trade was actually the result of poaching. South Africa's position, however, drew praise from conservative American groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which accused the U.S. CITES delegation of trying "to turn Third World countries into natural history museums."

South Africa is to be commended for controlling poaching much more effectively than in other African countries, where the culling is closer to slaughter. The trade in illegal ivory outside South Africa - not to mention powdered rhino horn and tiger bone for the Asian medicinal market - continues unabated (though an accord signed at the CITES meeting attempts to protect the tiger from further decimation).

And the South African tourist industry deserves praise for thinking eco-tourism through. It's more than just Jeep rides through wilderness areas. Julian Harrison, a U.S.-based SATOUR manager, offers a wonderful example of holistic eco-tourism. In the Phinda Resource Reserve, local people cull potentially dangerous non-native trees from the park, turn them into charcoal and profitably sell the result.

The new South Africa is conducting a top-to-bottom restructuring of its government ministries, and part of that is appointing African National Congress (ANC) supporters like Bantu Holomisa as Deputy Minister of Environment and Tourism. Environmentalism, says Holomisa, has been largely a whites-only phenomenon. "It's been completely neglected in the black areas," he said, "and we have to first concentrate on some very practical aspects, like clean water, sanitation and the processing of wastes."

This theme was also taken up in South Africa's first national environmental conference for blacks, held in Cape Town in November. Thobeka Thamage is director of Tsoga, Cape Town's only environmental center in a black township. "South Africa's environmental movement has historically been exclusively white dominated," she said. Blacks, she added, have often seen environmental issues "as irrelevant to their lives."

Contact: Africa Travel Association, 347 Fifth Avenue, Suite 610, New York, NY 10016/[phone]; South African Tourism Board, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110/[phone].

RELATED ARTICLE: Far-Flung Fantasies

Eco-Travel's Changing Faces, From Ecuador to Australia

Eco-tourism takes a wide variety of forms, and there's no objective green yardstick to measure resorts making ecological claims. Nor is price much of a determining factor. Writing in Vogue, Tad Friend tells of paying $1,195 for an Earthwatch trip to the Bahamas that consisted mainly of "testing thermometers [and] labeling water-collection cups" while eating "macaroni avec hot dogs."

But the four corners of the globe do offer some fascinating destinations, and activities ranging from rafting white water rapids right out of The River Wild to watching nature from a jungle tree-house. It's worth taking a chance. After all, the Caribbean beaches will still be there next year.

Ecuador: A "Park in Peril"

As one of The Nature Conservancy's "parks in peril," Podocarpus in southern Ecuador will soon offer a cloud forest lodge haven for researchers, tourists and international bird-watchers alike. Known for its varied species of birds - with more than 500 - the park has a greater variety of bird species than any other protected area in the world. A diversity of orchids, bromeliads, palms and tree ferns also thrive in this moist cloud forest: The spectacled bear, mountain tapir, ocelot and puma roam the dense undergrowth.

Use of the multi-room facility (including bathroom, shower and kitchen) is included with the $10 admission to the park. The Nature Conservancy, Ecuadorian park management, local conservation organizations, The World Wildlife Fund and the U.S. Peace Corps all had a hand in developing the facilities and the self-guided walking trails. An information center is also planned when the lodge opens early this year.

The completion of the lodge highlights a shift from past thinking about nature conservation. No longer are the important ecological areas, animal species or threatened indigenous cultures to be saved in their own right. Rather, economic and social considerations - alternatives in development - are being explored. These programs work more in sync with conservation and recognize the needs of the communities surrounding the threatened areas.

And in its first-ever foray into the eco-tourism business, CARE will soon complete an eight-room "Ecolodge" at Playa do Oro - "Beaches of Gold" - deep in the Ecuadorian coastal jungle. The lodge will act as both a research station and unique jungle adventure outpost for the more hearty Indiana Jones-types.

Situated in the Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve - six hours by dugout motorized canoes from Borbon - the area promises a rich experience of an unexpected sub-culture in a country best know for its "avenue of volcanoes" and snowcapped Andes. The 400-person village is inhabited by the descendants of slaves brought over by the Spanish several centuries ago to tend the mines, or work the banana, cocoa and sugar cane plantations. In the case of Playa de Oro, the community was first formed by the Spanish when they discovered gold in the area. Gold often washed up on shore after the heavy rain seasons - hence the village's name.

Hoping to use tourism as a sustainable enterprise to offset pressures from the logging industry, Playa de Oro, which will also open early this year, might well be that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to fund CARE's local health and educational programs and help generate incomes which do not destroy the rich Choco Forests of the region.

Contact: INEFAN, Calle Azuay 12-44y Olmedo, Loja, Ecuador; ARCOIRIS Foundacion Ecologica, P.O. Box 860, Loja, Ecuador; Corporacion de Conservacion y Desarrollo, P.O. Box 1716-1855, Quito, Ecuador/(011)593-2-465-845.

Nepal: Grassroots Greening

"YOUR ENTRY FEE GOES DIRECTLY TOWARDS CONSERVATION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES IN THE ANNAPURNA REGION," read the brochure sitting in a box outside the Immigration Office in Pokhara. The fee, 200 Nepalese rupees ($5), was high by Nepalese standards but small change for the hordes of Western trekkers and hikers who came to romp in the highest mountains in the world. The real difference, however, was in money's destination: the Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP).

Tourism is nothing new for Nepal: It's a leading source of foreign exchange. But over time, the effects of tourism have compounded the existing problems of a growing population. Every year, vast tracks of forested lands are cleared to meet the cooking, heating the lodging needs of tourists. Along with this deforestation, litter and sanitation problems add to the increasing pressures to accommodate more tourists. Tourism is currently growing at 17 percent annually.

Operating under the guidance of the King Mahendra Trust for Nature, and with additional funding from the World Wildlife Fund USA, German Alpine CLub and many other organizations, ACAP came into being in the mid-1980s. Now, with almost as many trekkers passing through the sizable Annapurna Reserve as there are villagers, ACAP is in a race for conservation and sustainable development as it addresses the effects of tourism on the natural environment, village economies and culture.

Environmental and social issues cannot be separated, and through this grassroots philosophy - centered around the traditional family unit and conservation education - the tide of unsustainable tourism growth is beginning to be reversed. Latrines have been built away from water sources, alternative energy sources (such as kerosene) have been utilized and a trekker information center has been created in Pokhara. After all, Nepal is here to change you, not for you to change Nepal. Contact: King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation, P.O. Box 3712, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Australia: The Rainforest Meets the Reef

"Where the Rainforest Meets the Reef" is the advertising tag line for Coconut Beach Rainforest Resort, an upscale lodge painstakingly blended into the nearly pristine and ancient tropical rainforests of Queensland, Australia, about 93 miles north of Cairns. The "ecological" resort rests between two UNESCO World Heritage Sites - the West Tropics and the Great Barrier Reef - and is surrounded by unique and diverse flora and fauna.

It is during the early evening and at night that the rainforest bursts alive with sound and activity like few other places in the world. Because of the lodge design, he visitor catches a rare glimpse into the wondrous world of tree palms, possums, iridescent blue Ulysses butterflies and hard-to-spot cassowaries. Raised walkway platforms have been designed to provide maximum vantage points while keeping visitors off the forest floor. Through the elevated bungalows, waste-recycled water systems and ecologically oriented library, the Coconut Beach Resort acts as a comfortable nature discovery center. Coconut Beach creates a rainforest experience with a wild mixture of education, relaxation and peace - frequently rained upon, of course.

Despite good intentions, the owners of Coconut Beach did stumble during its construction. Portions of the wood used in their main lodge come courtesy of the Malaysian rainforests - some of the most devastated forest on Earth. Eco-tourism seems a matter of degree and philosophy, not perfection. Perhaps Coconut Beach's soon-to-be-completed education facility will set the record straight.

Contact: Coconut Beach Rainforest Resort, 43-45 Abbott Street, P.O. Box 6903, Cairns 4870, Queensland, Australia/(011)070-52-1311.

Indonesia: Basic Training for Orangutan Survival

The Malay name for them means "man of the forest," and there are only two places left on Earth where you can still see this endangered species in the wild. Orangutans, perhaps the most human of the primate species, can only be found on Malaysian Borneo and on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. A mere 90 miles from the bursting population of Medan, Indonesia lies the once peaceful and remote village of Bukit Lawang. A preservation project originated with the purpose of returning the few remaining orangutans to their natural habitat has been transformed into one of the more popular Southeast Asian eco-tourist destinations: the Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre of Bukit Lawang.

Since its inception, the Centre was operated to rehabilitate orangutans held illegally in captivity or displaced by the destruction of the Indonesian rainforest. However, with the recent public concern over protecting the few remaining orangutans, and in the interest in attracting overseas tourism dollars, the Indonesian government managers are promoting the area as a destination for the enjoyment of nature. Through the WWF Visitor Centre and actual visits to the feeding station, the tourists get a rare opportunity to view the orangutans up close in their natural environment. It's a living classroom.

Unfortunately, the original aims of the project - including orangutan rehabilitation - are being replaced by profit motives. The orangutan visitation fees find their way into the government coffers in Jakarta. To complicate matters, people from Medan have begun a routine of visiting Bukit Lawang and using the crystal clear waters of the Bohorok River for washing clothes. Numerous lodges now overhang the river, often full of inner tubing youths who camp along the river's edge. Rumor has it that the whole area will be designated as a recreation area and the real orangutan center moved deep into the forests - where the orangutans receive true basic training.

Contact: Bohorok River Visitor Centre, 20774 Bukit Lawang, Sumatra Island, Indonesia.

JOHN IVANKO, a dedicated eco-traveler based in Chicago, is studying for a master's in leisure studies at Pennsylvania State University.

JIM MOTAVALLI is managing editor of E Magazine. Research assistance by Judy Stringer and Kristi Olson.