Threats of Wetland and its Impact on the Tourism Industry in Egypt: A Case Study of Wadi El Rayan

The uniqueness of wetland areas presents a great deal of opportunity for drawing tourists. Nonetheless, the relationship between wetland area capacity and visitors remains a treasure for efficient management of natural resources. According to the Ramsar Convention, wetlands are vital to the preservation of biodiversity on Earth and are an essential part of ecosystems. In addition, wetlands serve as habitat for numerous threatened plant and animal species. But it is seeing constant deterioration, the disappearance of these lands, and their transfer to other use. This research seeks to achieve two objectives were, firstly, to identify the importance of wetland in tourism industry. Secondly, to examine the main threats of wetland in Wadi El Rayan and its impacts in tourism industry in Egypt. A single case study was applied in this research to reach the research objectives. This research adopted a quantitative approach by using single case study to achieve the aim, objectives and research questions. Data collection involved questionnaire, total number of distributed questionnaires was 120 copies. The final returned questionnaires were 87 copies with 72.5% response rate. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS, version 26) program was used for analyzing data.
The results showed that wetland play an important role in tourism industry such as; increase the economic benefits for tourism industry; diverse and productive environments for tourism activities; it contributes to the diversification of tourism supply and demand in Egypt. The results also revealed that there are many threats that faced wetland which effect directly on tourism industry in Wadi El Rayan such as; negative attitude of visitor; human activities effect on ecosystem on wetland; fish-farming in Wadi El Rayan; water pollution; wastewater drainage inside the protected area; unlawful hunting and climate change effect on wetland that effect directly on tourism activities in Wadi El Rayan. The results suggest some strategies that help the officials and decision makers for reserve and protected wetland in Wadi El Rayan.  This research has many of limitations were, this research has many of limitations were, the first of which is that it only focused on one case study (Wadi El Rayan). Secondly, not all of Egypt's wetland sites were included in the study region. Thirdly the literature showed there is a lack of studies and researches on the study topic in Egypt, in particularly Wadi El Rayan. All wetland sites in Egypt should be included in future research in order to test and generalize the findings of the current study.