Born Free Foundation - Keep Wildlife in the Wild

An r:travel* exclusive - "The magazine for the responsible tourist". Published for the Responsible Tourism Awards 10/11/10

This article is published with the permission of r:travel.  Statements and opinions expressed within are those of the authors; the editors and publishers, not necessarily those of the Born Free Foundation.

Wildlife tourism has grown enormously in popularity over the past 30 years or so and is widely regarded as important for the conservation of wildlife. But is wilderness just the new luxury, or can it remain a force for good in a rapidly changing world? r:travel asks four experts to look at which way the wind is blowing.

People have had a fascination with wildlife since the beginning of civilisation, but it took the story of an orphan lioness cub being returned to the wild to spark a seismic shift in the way we wanted to see our animals: alive and in the wild, rather than mounted on a wall, turned into a rug or behind bars in a zoo.
The legacy of Born Free – and most especially the lush, romanticised 1966 Hollywood version starring Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers as Joy and George Adamson - cannot to be dismissed lightly. Coinciding with the growth of mass tourism and air travel, it became possible for the public at large to see wildlife at large in its natural habitat.

Africa, and particularly countries with a British connection, such as Kenya, came first, but wildlife tourism soon spread around the world. Now you can view animals in the wild pretty much anywhere – from the big cats of the Masai Mara to the giant tortoises of the Galapagos, the orang-utans of Borneo and the whales in our oceans.

Today, wildlife is booming, but those at the responsible end of the tourist industry warn that it is on the cusp of being a good or bad force. More and more people want to see animals, but are we in danger of over-exposing habitats and wildlife to people and risk losing the very creatures and habitats we are so desperate to see? In India, for example, the head of the country’s National Tiger Conservation Authority recommended the phasing out of tiger tourism because it was damaging the broader ecosystem. In the Central African Republic researchers concluded that gorillas are being stressed by the attention of tourists and are also vulnerable to human diseases such as the common cold.

On the other hand, wildlife tourism has been an undoubted boon for conservation. In many developing countries it has been the force that keeps logging, mining and intensive farming at bay – but only where fully-formed partnerships exist with local communities.

As well as helping through direct funding for conservation work, wildlife tourism creates jobs for local people – as guides, drivers, cooks, housekeepers, handymen, mechanics, security guards and other services. These incomes often support large extended families and help to establish the viability of conservation. But, crucially, if these communities do not benefit more from ecotourism then the pressure to encroach further on the habitats will increase. Put simply: what pays stays.

Around the world national parks are seen as ‘a good thing’ – and they undoubtedly provide oases of conservation. However, in many cases, the establishment of parks and reserves has brought local communities into conflict with park management. In Zimbabwe, for example, in addition to the alienation of their land, adjacent communities suffered extensive crop damage from marauding animals. Revenue from tourism flowed into the central treasury and local people received little compensation, if any, for destruction of their crops. Nor did they have access to park resources such as meat, grazing areas, wood or other products. In such circumstances, it is little wonder that poaching of wildlife and destruction of park fences became increasingly common.

Managing our own expectation as wildlife tourists is also important. Many of us go with a too-high expectation. We’re so used to seeing wildlife documentaries that we want an Attenborough-style encounter. But we need to think of that as an exceptional experience (one, after all, often gained by TV crews after months and months of patient waiting) and not an everyday one and learn to take as much pleasure from the sights, sounds and smells of the habitats themselves. Zoos unfortunately paint an unnatural picture that it is easy to see wild animals, which it is, of course, in a zoo where cages are small and often lacking vegetation and enrichment. In the wild it is very different, particularly in habitats with lots of vegetation. People need to learn to be patient, quiet and respectful of the animals they are viewing. There is certainly a tendency for the marketing of wildlife tourism to over promise. This puts pressure on guides to bend the rules to get sightings.

Another aspect – highlighted in the Best Volunteering category of the Responsible Tourism Awards – is the use of volunteers to help with conservation work. These ‘citizen scientists’ have been with us for years, helping field scientists gather vital data, or assist in the creation of a local infrastructure to support conservation. But is this perhaps the best future for wildlife tourism? More doing, less looking?

Daniel Turner, senior operations officer, Born Free Foundation
‘I hope that responsible viewing practices will be adopted by all tour operators, ground agents and national government – this is the only way the practice will become truly sustainable. Travelife and The Travel Foundation both have codes of practice for tour operators and ground agents, and numerous other codes have also been established. These need to be harmonised and adopted by governments and enforced through regulation. Members of the public also need to realise what impacts they might have should they disregard best practice guidance. Local communities need to be involved in all levels of tourism engagement and benefit financially – learning the importance of preserving the natural habitat.

I would like to see tour operators recognising the work of conservationists in the protection of species and their habitats – giving tourists the chance to see conservation in action. 

More tour operators need to recognise the impacts that they may be having on the natural environment, and seek to reduce and phase out those impacts, and work to increase the benefits to the habitats, the conservationists and the local communities through tourism initiatives. Responsible or sustainable tourism should be regarded as an intrinsic part of tour operations and not just for those who choose to take that option or for elitists.’

Justin Francis, MD responsible travel.com
‘Our wildlife and biodiversity is getting scarcer. More pressure is being put on protected areas. Wildlife tourism will have to be more tightly managed, with regard to tourist behaviour and expectations, by using zoning (including areas with no tourists) and ensuring local economic benefits.

Climate change means wildlife will need to move to more suitable habitats. This will prove hard or impossible if we have just isolated islands of protected areas. Corridors between them - through inhabited areas - are slowly being developed. To make this work communities will need to be compensated - the money will have to come from somewhere.

The most important thing to recognise is that tourism alone cannot solve this - it rarely earns enough income for local people. Tourism has to be far better planned alongside other sustainable livelihood strategies.’

Prof Lyn Beazley, chief scientist of Western Australia
‘Getting wildlife tourism right means balancing the biodiversity of a place and its local needs and if you don’t value wildlife then eventually you won’t have tourism at all.

Wildlife tourism should be about education as well as excitement and entertainment and when this happens it is a powerful force for good. We can't lock places away and just leave them; actively managing conservation areas is something we have to embrace and tourism can bring revenues to support the area as well as boosting research - some of the science issues we face are so important we need more people involved, we need citizen scientists, who help with gathering data and often these citizen scientists are also tourists.

Some people consider zoos or any wildlife experience where the animals are in captivity to be bad but there are fantastic research programmes run by Perth Zoo, which demonstrate where zoos can be a force for good. A turtle species thought to be extinct was brought back from the brink in one of the breeding projects at the zoo.’

Kathy Gill (Wilden), strategy director,  Biosphere Expeditions
‘If we don’t encourage people to appreciate wildlife then we will lose wildlife. If we encourage them too much we could start to lose it, too. But our interest in wildlife can only be positive in the long run, even if some of the issues at the edges need to be sorted out. Bad wildlife tourism can become good wildlife tourism. In the Amazon jungle of Peru, for example, we no longer see macaws in cages and monkeys tied to posts for the entertainment of tourists.

Climate change will have a massive impact in the future. Some habitats are going to shift so that some species risk being lost. The wildlife tourism dollar becomes more important. If we can fund more conservation activity we can support these places more effectively. But local partnerships are essential in this. Local communities have to benefit from wildlife conservation.

I hope that more and more people who want to contribute in terms of manpower and get a bit hands-on will carry on looking at wildlife, but include some conservation work in their trip, to help develop a greater depth of understanding of the problems of human/animal conflict and what it means to work in conservation. The more we appreciate how fragile the world is, the more we will want to contribute to saving it.’