In this photo made on May 22, 2019, a long queue of mountain climbers line a path on Mount Everest.

Several recent events, incidents and widely shared images have brought the issue of "overtourism," and its economic, environmental and human consequences front and center.

For three days in April, 10 popular tourist sites in the Faroe Islands were closed for maintenance but open to volunteers who came to create new walking paths, construct viewpoints, erect signs and rebuild ancient cairns.

At the end of May, the Louvre Museum, the home of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa painting and a must-do for any visitor to Paris, closed for one day after a walkout by workers who complained about overcrowding.

In Venice, where there's a movement to ban cruise ships from disgorging thousands of tourists into an already over-visited city, the MSC Opera cruise ship rammed into a dock and a tourist riverboat on June 2, injuring five people.

Fogle Tweet

And last month the deaths of several climbers on Mount Everest was blamed on congestion on the trails near the top.

The image broadcaster and adventurer Ben Fogle tweeted of a long line of climbers hoping to reach the summit may bring a limit to the number of hikers allowed on the mountain. Some have suggested a lottery; comedian Conan O'Brien joked about a Disney-style Everest Fastpass.

Conan O'Brien Tweet

Around the world, tourism bureaus and governments are taking steps to combat the wear and tear overtourism is creating. And not all these actions are brand new.

"In the 1980s, the government of Bhutan implemented sustainable tourism policies by following a tourism model of high value, low impact," said Erika Richter, spokeswoman for the American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA).