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Competition Comments
Entry:Preserving Estonian dugout canoe heritage through tourism
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The Geotourism Challenge: Celebrating Places - Changing Lives
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I am fortunate to have personally witnessed Mr Ruukel's ecotours in Soomaa National Park, including the hand-made dugout canoe (heavy too!). Modest, good-hearted and very knowledgeable, he has tirelessly and methodically revived traditions and plays an important role for Tourism in the whole of Estonia as a founding member and Chairman of the Estonian Ecotourism Society, as an eco advocate and scholar.
Antonis B. Petropoulos
Director, ECOCLUB-International Ecotourism Club
Canoe or something else? It don't see like canoe, but agree - this is smething else. hoping th landscape is diffrent in this place, notlike Venezia. Thanks.
Read more about the origin of dugout canoes in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dugout_canoe
and in Finnish Wikipedia : http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruuhi
Landscapes of Soomaa are flat and wet, you can see pictures at: http://flickr.com/groups/584948@N22/
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Aivar Ruukel
www.soomaa.com
This is a worth-while proposition by Aivar. Wish you strength for this!
Unts
Thank you for your support Untsel.
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Aivar Ruukel
www.soomaa.com
I would like to add few words about the degree of success of our project. I wrote that, success can be measured by:
1. number of dugout canoe workshops and trips organized.
2. number of people participated on these events.
3. number of media reviews, articles on papers and magazines, TV-shows
In 2007 we organized two five-days and two two-days workshops, 13 people participated. We had 18 river trips in 2007, with 70 participants, both visitors of Soomaa national park and local residents. Several articles was published in national and local newspapers and magazines, and we was interviewd aboud dugout project for three times in different national TV-programmes.
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Aivar Ruukel
www.soomaa.com