The Customer Isn't Always Right—Conservation and Animal Welfare Implications of the Increasing Demand for Wildlife Tourism

Abstract

Tourism accounts for 9% of global GDP and comprises 1.1 billion tourist arrivals per annum. Visits to wildlife tourist attractions (WTAs) may account for 20–40% of global tourism, but no studies have audited the diversity of WTAs and their impacts on the conservation status and welfare of subject animals. We scored these impacts for 24 types of WTA, visited by 3.6–6 million tourists per year, and compared our scores to tourists’ feedback on TripAdvisor. Six WTA types (impacting 1,500–13,000 individual animals) had net positive conservation/welfare impacts, but 14 (120,000–340,000 individuals) had negative conservation impacts and 18 (230,000–550,000 individuals) had negative welfare impacts. Despite these figures only 7.8% of all tourist feedback on these WTAs was negative due to conservation/welfare concerns. We demonstrate that WTAs have substantial negative effects that are unrecognised by the majority of tourists, suggesting an urgent need for tourist education and regulation of WTAs worldwide.

A review of wildlife ecotourism in Manaus, Brazil

“…Wildlife tourism can and does have positive impacts on wildlife (Brockington and Duffy 2010), but can also have neutral and negative impacts (Higginbottom 2004, Moorhouse et al 2015. In the absence of global regulatory authorities (Moorhouse et al 2016), independent ground-level audits, using direct observations and interviews with staff focused on welfare and conservation aspects (e.g.…”

“…touching) with wildlife such as dolphins and primates has also become a controversial tourist activity (Orams 2002, Moorhouse et al 2015. Despite the economic benefits, the baiting of pink river dolphins has already been identified as being of potential animal welfare concern (Alves et al 2011).…”

“…However, although wildlife ecotourism can and does have net positive impacts on wildlife (Brockington and Duffy 2010), recent research has highlighted that wildlife focused ecotourism can also have net negative impacts on both the conservation and the welfare of wild animals (Moorhouse et al 2015(Moorhouse et al , 2016. For example, regular close proximity of tourists with free-ranging wildlife can have an adverse impact on an array of animal behaviors such as breeding (Jacobson and Lopez 1994) and foraging (Meissner et al 2015).…”

“…However, the outcomes of these trade-offs, particularly the negative impacts on wild animal conservation and welfare, are difficult to detect, especially by tourists themselves (Moorhouse et al 2015). Different attitudes and societal expectations can often complicate such decision-making even further (Moorhouse et al 2016).…”

Behavioural changes in African elephants in response to wildlife tourism

“…In terms of the management of such protected wildlife habitats, tourist satisfaction is usually the driving goal (Novellie, 1991). Negative impacts on animal welfare caused by wildlife tourism have been reported (Moorhouse et al, 2015). Where negative impacts elicit chronic stress, they can potentially lead to decreased reproduction, increased risk of predation, starvation, susceptibility to diseases, dispersing away from release site (Reynolds & Braithwaite, 2001;Teixeira et al, 2007;Bhattacharjee et al, 2015) and lasting effects on behavioural patterns (McEwen & Wingfield, 2003).…”