A multidisciplinary framework to assess the sustainability and acceptability of wildlife tourism operations

Abstract

Wildlife tourism is growing in popularity, diversity of target species, and type of tours. This presents difficulties for management policy that must balance the complex trade-offs between conservation, animal welfare, and pragmatic concerns for tourist satisfaction and economic value. Here, we provide a widely applicable, multidisciplinary framework to assess the impacts of wildlife tourism focusing on industry tractability, socioeconomic values, and their effects on conservation, animal welfare, and ecosystem impacts. The framework accommodates and quantifies the complexity of factors influencing wildlife tourism management, including direct and indirect effects on target and nontarget species, and identifies priorities for future biological, socioeconomic, and cultural heritage research. When applied to white shark cage-diving as a case study, the output demonstrates the utility of the framework for researchers, managers, and policy makers, and highlights the benefits of undertaking the assessment as an inclusive workshop to facilitate a more multidisciplinary assessment of wildlife tourism industries. The use of a universally applicable assessment framework will enable the identification of relevant factors to account for when managing wildlife tourism, provide an inventory of current knowledge, identify research needs, and semiquantitatively compare categories and target and nontarget species, leading to improved conservation outcomes for species and ecosystems.

Revival of Sri Lankan Wildlife Tourism Operation in New Normal Conditions of Covid -19: Challenges and Readiness

“…The benefit of wildlife tourist attractions is that they contribute to the long term protection of wildlife and wildlife habitats. Previous studies explored that Wildlife tourism can affect the conservation knowledge, attitudes, and behavior of tourists, thus visitors could provide it in a well-conceived, managed, and delivered manner (Meyer et al, 2021).…”

Traveling preferences in Madhya Pradesh post COVID-19

“…The government has developed dedicated tourism policy framework and budgetary allowance for promoting domestic tourism products from wildlife, adventure, religious, historic, cultural, or many more in the last decade (Arunmozhi & Panneerselvam, 2013; Rallan, n.d.; Mary, n.d.). It aims to facilitate regional economic development bridging the economic and technical divide, (Kifworo et al, 2020;Meyer et al, 2021) catering to their preferences attributed to lean marketing strategies promoting niche tourism areas like wildlife, ecotourism, wellness, etc. segmenting market based on diverse identified preferences (Carr et al, 2016).…”

Short-term response of research activities on white shark behaviour

“…A key factor in assessing the sustainability and acceptability of wildlife tourism industries is determining whether operator activities disrupt the diet, natural foraging, or nutritional condition of the animals (Meyer et al 2022). Despite not directly feeding white sharks, concerns that occasional incidental feeding occurs when bait handlers are caught unaware and bait (southern bluefin tuna, Thunnus maccoyii, heads and gills) was consumed (Huveneers et al 2015;Meyer et al 2021), warranted an assessment of the diet of white sharks at the Neptune Islands, using fatty acid analysis of muscle samples (Meyer et al 2019). This necessitated the use of a modified speargun to take biopsies from free-swimming white sharks (Meyer et al 2018).…”

“…Despite not directly feeding white sharks, concerns that occasional incidental feeding occurs when bait handlers are caught unaware and bait (southern bluefin tuna, Thunnus maccoyii , heads and gills) was consumed (Huveneers et al . 2015; Meyer et al . 2021), warranted an assessment of the diet of white sharks at the Neptune Islands, using fatty acid analysis of muscle samples (Meyer et al .…”