Strategic position of rangeland ecotourism: analyses of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats from pastoralists and experts’ viewpoint in Til Abad region, Golestan Province

Ecotourism as one of rangeland ecosystem services in the development plan countries has been under the focus of governments and land managers. The goal of this study is strategic analysis of rangeland ecotourism in Til Abad -Golestan province by using pastoralists and rangeland experts’ point of view. In this order, after identification of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and weaknesses factors of rangeland ecotourism through face-to-face interviews, weighting and prioritization of factors conducted by a semi-structured questionnaire between 60 expert and pastoralist via SWOT model. Result showed that between strength factors ‘seasonal aesthetic such as flowering of Saffron over a specific period of year’ and ‘economic income on account of rangeland ecotourism for pastoralists’ with final weight of 0.389 and 0.287 were introduced with highest prioritization by pastoralists and experts. Among weakness factors ‘lack of waste collection system and effect of garbage on aesthetic feature of the landscape’ and ‘lack of taking traditional knowledge and local human sources into consideration for ecotourism management’ with final weight of 0.552 and 0.413 were introduced. ‘Execution of international carbon sequestration project in the region and its economic potential’ and ‘reciprocal transmission of local cultures’ with final weigh of 0.590 and 0.645 were identified among opportunity factors. Among threat factors ‘weakness of ecotourism visitor’s culture and lack of natural resources culture’ with final weight of 0.449 and 0.669 was introduced with highest prioritization by pastoralists and experts. In addition, strategic situation of rangeland ecotourism was determined as ‘defensive’ (WT) by pastoralists and ‘competitive’ (WT) by experts.