Making Wildlife Viewable: Habituation and Attraction

Abstract

Th e activity of wildlife viewing rests on an underlying contradiction. Wild animals are generally human-averse; they avoid humans and respond to human encounters by fl eeing and retreating to cover. One would therefore expect human viewing of wild animals to be at best unpredictable, intermittent, and fl eeting. Yet in recent decades, wildlife viewing has become a major recreational activity for millions of people around the world and has emerged as a thriving commercial industry. How can these two things-widespread wildlife intolerance of humans and large-scale human observation of wildlife-be squared? Th e answer is that wild animals are only viewed on this scale because they have been made viewable through human intervention. Th is article examines two kinds of intervention-habituation and attraction-that change wildlife behavior toward humans and render hitherto elusive animals susceptible to regular, proximate, and protracted human viewing.

Activity Budgets of Impala (Aepyceros melampus) in Closed Environments: The Mukuvisi Woodland Experience, Zimbabwe

“…Although these interventions increase visitor satisfaction [47,48], the long-term socioecological implications and unintended consequences remain uncertain. Knight [11] asserts that habituated or provisioned animals are not brought only within viewing range but also within nuisance range. This challenge occurs when human invitation to animals to come closer ends up as an animal intrusion into human space where they tend to exhibit "begging" behaviours towards tourists [49].…”

“…The seasonality of activity budgets might be highly flexible in response to seasonal fluctuations in food supply and corresponding temperature [8]. However, the influence of seasonality on food quality and availability in some environments seems to be affected by the current trends of attraction, provisioning, and habituation of some species [9][10][11][12]. Consequently, we expect that provisioned individuals would ultimately spend less time searching for food and foraging during the dry season compared to those occurring in non-provisioned environments.…”

“…Closely related to attraction is the concept of provisioning which is an interaction where humans exploit the animal's appetites and desire 2 International Journal of Biodiversity for food to offset or neutralise their aversion to humans [11,14]. Habituation is the waning of response to repeated, neutral stimuli such as human presence that ultimately render hitherto elusive animals susceptible to regular, proximate and protracted human viewing [11]. We argue that the level of provisioning and attraction for wildlife species in some systems may reduce seasonal variations in activity budgets of impala social groups.…”

Determining the Role of Hand Feeding Practices in Accidental Shark Bites on Scuba Divers

“…Provisioning uses the animals' attraction to food to offset or neutralize their aversion to humans [19]. The animals tolerate a human presence in return for the feeding opportunity available to them.…”

Environmental Consequences of Wildlife Tourism: The Use of Formalised Qualitative Models

“…The popularity of wildlife tourism (WT) has been growing in recent decades (e.g., Giannecchini, 1993;Ballantyne et al, 2009;Knight, 2009) and its importance has become more salient in economic terms (e.g., Orams, 2002). The task of the present paper is to outline a formalised qualitative model (FQM) of certain environmental consequences of WT.…”