Inside the ultra-luxury eco-adventure industry turning conservation into a status symbol

Science-based ecotourism has traditionally been a more rugged affair, often involving backpacks, hammocks, and sturdy hiking boots. Lately, the sector has attracted a different kind of well-to-do do-gooder: As the pandemic and climate crisis have turbocharged a don’t-delay mentality among eco-curious travelers, high-end adventure companies have found themselves busy.

If you drew a Venn diagram with circles for absurd luxury, rarefied access, scientific enlightenment, and philanthropic conservation, EYOS Expeditions, charterer of the 187-foot Solace, would occupy the intersection. “People that travel with us are inherently curious about the world,” CEO Ben Lyons told the author over dinner the night before their Dominica expedition. (The experience and yacht are offered at $395,000 per week) “Given the incredibly fortunate positions our clients find themselves in, they want to do something to give back.”

The kind of experience these companies curate manages to be sumptuously luxe and transformatively meaningful—and offers plenty of swashbuckling tales to tell. But it is not the kind of vainglorious folly that sends celebrities into space or ends up with a submersible imploding on the seafloor. Instead, it could be a naturalist-led meet-and-greet with resident giant tortoises at the Waldorf Astoria Platte Island in the Seychelles, or a research expedition with polar scientists aboard Ponant’s luxe icebreaker.

At Islas Secas, a Panamanian private-island resort that hosts speakers from National Geographic and the National Audubon Society, the author met Henry Cookson of Cookson Adventures, an OG operator in this space that plans trips starting at $200,000. He sent a group of clients to participate in the translocation of 14 rhinos with the Kenya Wildlife Service. “You’re in the thick of it: the dust, the smell, the urgency,” he said. “Everyone has a role, from being in the helicopter with the sharpshooter to pouring water over the rhino’s head to keep it cool.” It’s a far cry from passively observing wildlife from a safari Jeep, he said: “The ultimate bragging right is putting a thermometer up a rhino’s ass.”

It would be naive to ignore the tension between conservation and conspicuous consumption, and companies have tried to reckon with that thorny issue. Cookson calculates carbon offset into its pricing, and London outfitter Journeys With Purpose (JWP), which is taking a group to Norway in July in partnership with Polar Bears International, includes a mandatory, percentage-based donation to conservation efforts. Many clients on JWP’s trips—which start at $17,000 per person—donate more.

The idea behind this kind of tourism is that it can help fund conservation, while inspiring wealthy and powerful people to deepen their engagement in environmental activism.  What these companies offer are high-access, singular experiences that would be hard to replicate. A close encounter with a sperm whale, for example, could never be offered in mass-market tourism. Dominica has designated 300 square miles of marine reserve as off-limits to humans, and leaves open the slimmest keyhole for tourists to swim with the mammals. A tightly regulated permit costs 16,000 Eastern Caribbean dollars (currently $5,900) for a maximum of three swimmers, with a guide.

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