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In several regions with rare or endemic bird species, birdwatching tourism has grown from a minor pastime into a meaningful source of rural income. Visitors often travel long distances and pay for local guides, lodging, and transport specifically to glimpse a single elusive species, generating revenue in areas with few other attractions. Unlike extractive industries such as logging or mining, this form of tourism depends on habitats remaining intact, which has encouraged some communities to protect forests they might otherwise have cleared for farmland. However, researchers caution that the benefits are unevenly distributed: much of the spending goes to established tour operators and international guidebook publishers rather than to the villages nearest the birding sites. Some conservationists now argue that community-owned guiding cooperatives are needed to ensure local residents share more directly in the proceeds.