The Impact of tourism on wildlife

Impact of tourism on wildlife

Since humans began to interact with animals they have always been fascinated by them. The animals give al, they live with there instincts and there way of living. If we see a animal that I hurt we want to help, and if one come up to you and look at you with there eyes that say I am hungry, how can you not help them? The way of using animals for tourist have been going on for many years. People having elephants that can do trick and monkeys that you can hold. Humans toke animals in to circuses and showed them of so that we could see that they were not that dangerous. So when humans al over the world got use to having animals in animals parks or at the circuses they need more. So to interact with animals in the wild was the next step, to have a photo of you feeding a cut koala or petting a tiger. That is were the wild life tourism is to day, with live interactions. The reason that it is big and that people want to do this thing is because over history with animals make us want to do things with them. Animals is a very good attraction (Reynolds and Brathwaite 2001), the travelling circuses knotweed that 100 of years ago, and it still works, have a interesting animal and people come for it. The easiest to show this is to think about what symbols is used with big companies to marketing there products for example the panda for WWF and the bull for red bull. The cute panda that everyone associates with helping the planet and a bull that make you think that drinking it makes you strong as a bull.

So in this essay we will be looking at the impact that the wildlife tourism have and have had on the animals.

Key points:

The negative effect wildlife tourism have on animals are the effects of feeding animals, cars in parking lots that might injury or kill animals and habitat changes. The positive effect is when the wildlife interactions are under proper supervision there will be a financial contribution, and also education to the tourist and the people helping. So to see why this effect are fighter negative or positive lets look deeper on the different aspects.

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The wildlife tourisms biggest problem is when the animals get to used to being around people, when the peoples point with the trip is to get as close as possible, and in many cases to feed the animals (Orams 1996). What tourist do when they feed wild animals is that they changes there natural behaviors and then the future for the animals (Marint and R’eale 2007). What happens is that the young animals/ next generations learn from the beginning that humans give food. The adult animals will not teach the young ones how to find there oven food and they will relay on humans. So what happens when one animals attack for food and the managers forbid al feeding. How can the animals then find food if humans stop feeding them? Is this really the way we want the wild animals to behave? Do we want them to be pets as well, to have all the animals obeying the human? As already stated one problem with feeding animals is that they can become aggressive if they don’t get enough food, or that more dangerous animals come in to camping ground to find food from trashcans and in the peoples tenths and caravans. The one that suffer from this is not the humans, it is the animals, they can get bad food. They way to handle the animals that don’t fit in to the standards set by humans is to take them away. Ether by relocate them or to put them to sleep, humans have change the nature, and are saying that the nature have to follow the changes.

An other thing that can happen is that the animals get direct injury or death by cars (Green and Higginbottom 2000). That animals at parking lots that have gotten used to get food at cars will go up to the cars and them and get hit by them (wallabies on cradle mountain national park in Tasmania, skira and smith 1991). This is a big impact since in most cases the animals die, what can be done is that if it used to be a popular area to feed the animals to put up signs so that the new tourist know that they are not allowed to feed the animals. Also to show them that there are wild animals in the area so the look where they are going, it is hard to see behind the car, but if the people are more aware of the animals they might not miss them.

But Humans don’t only accidental kill the animals, they also interfering and go in to the animals habitats. That disturbs the animals behavior and inducing more stress in to there normal life (Green and Higginbottom 2000). There have been a lot of studys made that proves that when the animals here human, get photo taken of them and have cars stop close there stress levels get higher. So they then spend more energy on moving away from humans instead on their growth or reproduction (shaughnessy et.al 2008 and Courbis 2007). The main impact that humans have on animals when it comes to interfering is changing their habitat. That can happens in many of ways, one is to make the environment more friendly to humans like putting in walking or driving roads roads. This is bad, because if many humans walk on the road the animals will move away to be left alone, then the new road have to be made to get to then animals. The problem when not bilding walking tracks is that the tourist will walk to the animals the way they can, so it can be the fast or the one that everyone els walks. It will still be a big impact ether way, because if people walk their oven way more of the habitat will be affected. But with walking tracks normal paths for the animals can be cut off. The effect that new drive roads can have is that people can get to the animals essayer. That will give higher speed on the cars and busses, more road kills and more contamination of gases from the cars. It will also give a higer presur on the location that it can handle more people, like car parks and trash caring. The biggest problem when people are coming in to the animals habitat is that they want to go beyond the barriers. So the fact that in national parks the guides are not well paid, so they will break the law of the park if the visitor bribes them with money (Sekhar 2003). This often happens so the tourist can go closer to the animals and that disturbs the animals more. The way to stop this is to pay the guides more and educate them so the know why it is bad for the animals. Even draw the parallel to that if the animals get disturb to much they might move away and the guide can loss their small income.

One other problem that the wild life industry have is to measure the impact. That the animals get more street by human presents is a fact (Courbis 2007 and Shaughnessy et.al 2008). But that is the only way of measuring it there are still animals that will come closer to the people to get food. One way of dealing with this is to use the precautionary principle, this is a principle that implies that there is a responsibility to protect the humans from exposure to harm where scientific investigation discovers a possible risk (Matthee, Vermersch 2000 and Orams 2002). So the principle is to be carefully when in this case staring a wildlife tourism. Is it known that animals can attack, and injury them self or/and the people. So to work with wild animals there need to be some precaution to protect both the animals and the humans. This principle is use not only by wildlife tourism, but in every way it is needed. One thing that management and evolution of the al tourism have given is wisdom, so that humans don’t keep on doing the same mistake over and over again. As said by Reynolds P, Braithwaite D (2001) that the problem with the precautionary principle it that people operation after the precautionary principle where not understood by the people coming to see the animals. And when the recognition with that it is the best way of managing something is gone the managing falls.

The positive effects are fewer then the negative one, but that makes them no less important, since it is them that will help the wildlife tourisms. The financial help is the major factor that keeps the wildlife tourism working. The entry fees and guide tours contribute to some of the conservation for the animals and there habitat. That the tourist se that the money goes back to protect the animals and also to the people that work to help them. The problem is often that the rangers and other people working don’t see the money since it goes in to the government and then back to the parks. So they can´t see how the fees are contributing to their work wish would be a reason why it is easy to bribe some of them. The fact that the workers are not well paid is a reason that they are easy to bride as said above, what to do about that? It is hard to change how money gets distributed, the reason that there is protections is for the animals, so the money should go to them. But when the one that should follow the rules to protect the animals break them because of money, maybe more of the money should go to them so they will protect the animals better. There can always be a debate on were the money should be spend, but in the end, money will be a good help to help the tourism industry to work. For example when tourist pays to go out on boats to see whales or to dive at protected places, there is a extra fee to pay. That money goes back to the mangier that will keep the protection and be able to see that the industry is interact in with the animals the right way.

The other positive effect that the tourism industries have is education. To give to the visitors so that they know how they are helping the animals and can be spread the knowledge’s around. There is no better way to spread something then to from mouth to mouth. Education will also make the people to see that it is a wild animals and not a pet. That the wild animals should live like they are not to be petted or feed. If people want to feed wild animals they should go to animal parks, not in to the wild where the animals later will be the one suffering. So to educate everyone, the rangers/ park workers and the tourist is the best way to get more people aware of the problem that can occur with wild animals.

When looking at the effect that tourist have on the wild life it looks like the negative is more and have a bigger effect on the outcome then the positive. That is not the entire truth and the reason for that is the money. Tourism is one of the most money making industry. The tourism brings a lot of money in to the governments and have a huge impact on countries economy, so to have a tourism that draw people is important. As said above animal is a good way to market your product, and have always fascinated humans. So to have a big wildlife tourism is important for the economy of the world, so to stop is not the way to go, but to have it sustainable and a good managing plan is important. A lot of the negative effects have been pointed out above to be solved by relocating the animals or killing them. This is not a good method, why should the animal suffer when the humans change the natural way of things? The people were the ones going in to the forest giving animals food, or leving food scraps behind. The people are the ones that are changing everything in the first place and then we blame the animals for it. So to solve this good managing need to be dune to help the animals live in there habitat as they are mean to live.

To stop humans from changing the environment for the animals and then blaming them for not adapting Reynolds and Brathwaite (2001) said that controlling the encounters it the best way. And that leads back to the management and that they have to solve the problem that humans started by feeding and wanting to get close to wild animals.

One thing that have been mentions above is management, that to have a wildlife interaction the management have to be good. But what can they do? Looking at the negative effects that wildlife tourism can have there is a lot to be work on. That is not the case. Most of the negative effects have been work in since the where detected. Speed limits on road were wild animals might be present or fence put up and special animal rout to get a cross have been made. In most place were animals still get feed by humans they have restricted the amount of food that will be distributed so they animals still need to find food some were else. Also what Cinner and Aswani (2007) did was to get the local people to be involved to conserve there recourses. If the people living in the area and the tourist know the problem a lot of the problem is not there to begin with. So the education that is there is a fine managing plan, if the tourist know more before they get to the animals they will be lest likely to do the stupid

things like petting a wild animal. So good management is the key to success. With the management the education of people comes to be, one of the best example on this is how people that where living on collection souvenirs of the animals for tourist. Like getting sea horses from the sea, or hunting gorillas to trade with their meat. Got educated and told that they where destroying their lively hood. That go them thinking and with help they instead focused on protection there resource and get more tourist to come and see it instead of selling it of and losing it al in the end.

The key point to see in this is that when it comes down to the wild life industry. The people working with it and the tourist coming to enjoy it is that first word, wild. The reason people go in boat out to see and interact with whales or in to the jungle to see giant pandas (Guangming 2008) is to see and be with them in there natural habitat. One more thing to point out is natural. What happened a lot in the beginning with the interactions between humans and animals where that humans tried to change the natural way of things. The nature where here before humans, and will be here after humans if people don’t destroy it before they are gone.

Conclusion.

There are some problems that make interactions with wild animals both hard and dangerous. One is that wildlife tourism is having a lot of different components in it, so management is hard. As talk above that tying to us the precautionary principle is good, but it needs to be shown of in a good way, with education. We should not be able to feed or pet animals to keep the wild, when people accept that the conservation can be done in a bigger scale. The management are of the wild life tourism is what is helping the animals the most, since to protect them from being souvenirs or in captivity keep them alive and in the wild. Humans are trying to restore what have been lost and help the animals, and even though to leave the animals alone to be wild, might be the best for the animals, the money and educations that the wildlife tourism gives back to humans is what will save the industry and the animals in the end.

Reference

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