Nature Conscious Tourism Initiative
A 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to wildlife conservation in tourism landscapes.
The Nature Conscious Tourism Initiative
Our Story
I, Nessie O’Neil, got a degree in tourism on a whim.
At the time, I was working for a company that offered free tuition, and enrolling in another degree meant I could continue my education without immediately taking on payments from my previous student loans. None of the available programs felt like an obvious choice, so I handed the decision to someone else: my rescue raccoon, Moonshine.
I wrote the degree options on pieces of paper, placed an almond on each one, and let her choose. She picked Tourism and Hospitality Management at Johnson & Wales University.
My family found this particularly funny because I had spent much of my life complaining about tourism. Growing up in places like New Orleans, Gatlinburg, and Folly Beach, I saw what happens when large numbers of visitors arrive without much consideration for the communities or environments they are visiting. As an autistic kid, the crowds and noise were already difficult for me, but the litter and environmental damage bothered me even more. I had very little interest in ever working in the tourism industry. Then I started studying it.
What changed my perspective was realizing that tourism itself was not necessarily the problem. Tourism can damage ecosystems, disrupt communities, and create serious problems for wildlife, but it can also provide funding, jobs, education, and a financial reason to protect natural areas. The difference often comes down to how tourism is managed and who benefits from it.
That became especially relevant as my work in zoology and wildlife conservation began to overlap with my tourism education. I became particularly interested in the critically endangered pygmy raccoon of Cozumel, Mexico. Tourism-related development, wildlife feeding, and frequent contact with people are all important parts of the conservation challenges facing this species.
Eventually, the degree Moonshine chose for me became directly relevant to the wildlife research I wanted to do.
Today, I am a graduate student in biology at Miami University, where my research focuses on pygmy raccoon behavior, human-wildlife interactions, and the ways tourism may affect the health, welfare, behavior, and conservation of the species.
The Birth of NCTI
The Nature Conscious Tourism Initiative grew out of work I began in Belize while completing my master’s program with Project Dragonfly at Miami University.
In 2024, I visited the Community Baboon Sanctuary, a community-based conservation program protecting black howler monkeys and their habitat. Rather than functioning as a traditional enclosed sanctuary, the project is built around agreements among local villages to conserve habitat and reduce practices that harm the monkeys.
The model showed me what tourism could look like when conservation and local communities were allowed to benefit from it. As the monkey population recovered, tourism also created opportunities for guides, artisans, families, and community programs.
But there was a problem. Even though the communities were doing the conservation work, they were not always receiving the economic benefit. Tour companies could drive visitors through the area, point out the monkeys, and leave without stopping at the sanctuary, hiring local guides, visiting the museum, or purchasing from local businesses. The animals were attracting tourists, but the communities protecting them were not necessarily benefiting from those visitors.
I already had experience in website development, writing, and search engine optimization, so I offered to help. I built the Community Baboon Sanctuary a new website designed to make the organization easier for travelers to find and to connect visitors directly with the people responsible for protecting the monkeys.
That project became the foundation for NCTI.
At first, the goal was primarily to help conservation-focused tourism organizations compete with larger attractions that had much greater marketing resources. Many small conservation organizations are extremely good at protecting wildlife, restoring habitat, educating visitors, or supporting local communities. They are not necessarily staffed to build websites, write for search engines, or manage digital outreach. NCTI was created to help fill that gap.
How NCTI Has Grown
Since then, the organization has expanded beyond its original focus on tourism communications. Today, NCTI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit supporting wildlife research, conservation education, direct conservation action, and conservation organizations. Much of our current work is centered on Cozumel and the critically endangered pygmy raccoon. NCTI helps fund my permitted pygmy raccoon research as well as local conservation and welfare efforts on Cozumel, including rescue, veterinary treatment, rehabilitation, and other direct assistance for raccoons in need. Volunteers and collaborators also contribute to projects through translation, outreach, education, and other forms of support.
We still use the skills that helped start the organization. NCTI continues to provide limited website and communications guidance to conservation organizations when we can make a meaningful contribution. But the larger goal has grown beyond helping conservation organizations market themselves. The work now centers on a broader question: how can research, tourism, education, and direct conservation support be used together to produce better outcomes for wildlife?
For me, it is a somewhat unlikely path from letting a raccoon choose a college degree to conducting research on one of the world’s rarest raccoon species. But in retrospect, Moonshine made a pretty good choice.
