Abstract:Theoretically, tourism in protected area plays an important role in reconciling the conflicts between local development and biodiversity conservation. However, its effects are hard to achieve in practice when confronting complex socio-economic conditions. Thus, it is necessary to analyze the effectiveness of tourism in practice in order to achieve sustainable protected area management and tourism development. For stakeholders of tourism in the protected area, local community always acts as bridge in connecting tourism, biodiversity conservation and protected area management. They are often taken as main object in evaluating tourism in protected area. The paper studies the current economic participation status of local people in tourism in Wolong Nature Reserve, using a questionnaire survey. Choosing tourism related business operators as objects, we evaluated their geographical origin, income and occupational distribution. The results have shown: (1) The relationships among tourism, local people and biodiversity conservation are still weak in the study area. Local people, especially those suffering economic loss from wild animal destroy were not involved in tourism. Outsiders who do not bear conservation cost have an advantage in economic participation in tourism. In addition, some local people involved in the tourism are still dependent on local natural resources; (2) Economic losses happen in the study area. Economic income from tourism is not retained in the study area to improve economic circle. Most tourism products are imported from outside the study area and few local resources are developed; (3) Local people′s economic participation is constrained due to limited startup capital and operational skills. They are also confronted with competition with outsiders. For the manager, it is important to provide technical training and startup capital to local people and give them priority in employment.