6 Minute English / Ecotourism: good or bad?

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I m Neil.

And I m Beth. Nowadays, the word safari is often used negatively. For many people, the idea of killing animals for sport is unacceptable.

As the popularity of hunting declines, safaris are swapping their guns for cameras, offering tourists the chance to photograph wild animals in their natural habitat. In recent years, nature and wildlife tourism, also called ecotourism, has grown massively.

But the story is complex. While money from ecotourism is supposed to support threatened wildlife and traditional local cultures, the reality is sometimes different. In this programme, we ll be asking: is ecotourism good or bad? And, as usual, we ll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well.

But first I have a question for you, Beth. Most tourists on safari are looking for the big five , the name given to Africa's most iconic large animals. But which animals are the big five ? Is it:

a) the lion, leopard, giraffe, baboon and buffalo

b) the lion, leopard, tiger, elephant and buffalo or

c) the lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant and buffalo?

I guess it s a) the lion, leopard, giraffe, baboon and buffalo.