Assessment of wildlife tourism potential in Gunung Stong State Park.

The present study was used to identify potential attributes of Gunung Stong State Park (GSSP) to become a suitable place for wildlife tourism implementation as GSSP is honored with regular backwoods living spaces and rich with flora and faunas, amongst its attraction is natural wilderness. The objective of this study is to identify the flagship species of wildlife tourism and to determine the tourist’s perception and expectations towards implementing wildlife tourism in the study area. List of potential flagship wildlife species were collected from Gunung Stong management plan and linked with the current IUCN status to show that this species have tendency to play their role as a flagship species. Next a convenience sampling and a planned questionnaire was applied in this study to evaluate the possibilities of wildlife tourism implementation interest. Besides, direct observations of the activities were carried out to recognize the existing activities in GSSP which able to support wildlife tourism. This study attempts to identify 12 flagship species which two were birds and the remaining 10 were mammals as the key potential for wildlife tourism. Based on tourists demographic profile obtained through survey instrument, majority of the tourists were Malaysian and only an 11% were foreign tourists and the analysis showed positive distribution of tourists perception in supporting wildlife tourism implementation, majority indicated that they do support for the introduction of wildlife tourism in Gunung Stong State Park, even their purpose for visiting Gunung Stong State Park is for adventure activities and not specifically to see wildlife. From direct observation two activities were observed which were hiking and events organized by Gunung Stong State Park authorities which participated by tourists. Based on this identification recommendations have been suggested to enable the wildlife tourism setting to be implemented. This may result an increase in tourists arrival at Gunung Stong State Park and ultimately improvise the socio-economic development
of the state.