goats

The main source of income in Rum is still not tourism, but the sheep/goats, and camels.
The sheep/goats are a resource which is managed by the women and children, whereas camels are the domain of men and boys (and guiding tourists is the work of men only.)

There are now rumours of proposals to ban grazing in large areas of the Zelabieh's traditional tribal territory around Wadi Rum. There is talk of confining the animals in "prisons for goats" and bringing feed in from outside. The Beduin have been pastoral nomads for thousands of years. They have their own systems of environmental management if left to sort things out for themselves,including concepts of "protected areas".
But the RSCN see the local people as a "threat to the environment", who "need to be taught about nature conservation".

Women's important economic role as herders is under threat if they can no longer take the goats out. To compensate for the loss of income, the RSCN has started employing local women in workshops producing "handicrafts" for tourists. As Geraldine says (see her article)
"...the artefacts they make do not have any connection to what Beduin women consider their traditional crafts - another example of how people's knowledge is ignored,of how they are turned into ignorant ones who have to be taught, and of how they are disempowered by development projects that pretend to empower them. Some of these "nature-oriented" handicrafts look remarkably similar to "American Indian" crafts on sale in US National Parks and Indian Reservations. Co-incidence ? Perhaps. But the US National Parks Service is advising the RSCN. (Of course there is more of a market for "rock art" t-shirts than for lengths of black goat-hair cloth...)

But the animals are not just of economic importance ; they play an important part in Beduin culture, and in defining women's place in that culture. The goats are the women's reason to be out in the outside world.

The women and girls take the flocks and herds up the wadis to the springs to browse on the herbs that grow there. While the goats eat the mint and sage, the women make tea and have the crack together, grandmothers and granddaughters, sisters and cousins. They scramble up through the canyons in the mountains to reach the plants that grow up there. One of my first experiences in wadi Rum was on one of the canyon scrambles, needing a hand down a tricky little slab, and then meeting an old Beduin shepherdess in long dress and plastic sandals, with her flock. (I am supposed to be "a climber", and she, presumably, would not say she was.)
Young boys are involved too. They tell stories, like the time Abdallah got stuck trying to rescue 3 goats, and Eid had to rescue him and the goats.

Compare all that to having the goats/sheep penned in a certain place. The men have to take feed to them in jeeps, and the women are stuck at home. Yet this is the RSCN "being reasonable", "allowing" the Beduin to keep their animals...