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

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 an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one Vol. 10; no. 10; p. e0138939
Main Authors: Moorhouse, Tom P., Dahlsjö, Cecilia A. L., Baker, Sandra E., D'Cruze, Neil C., Macdonald, David W.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States Public Library of Science 21.10.2015
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects:
Analysis
Animal rights
Animal Welfare
Animals
Animals, Wild
Cetacea
Comparative analysis
Conservation
Conservation of Natural Resources
Conservation status
Customer relations
Environmental education
Feedback
National parks
Protection and preservation
Recreation
Tourism
Tourist attractions
Tourists
Travel
Wildlife
Wildlife conservation
Wildlife tourism
Zoology
Zoos
United States
United Kingdom > UK
Bali Indonesia
Indonesia
ISSN:1932-6203, 1932-6203
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary: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.
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Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Conceived and designed the experiments: TPM CALD SEB NCDC DWM. Performed the experiments: TPM CALD. Analyzed the data: TPM CALD. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: TPM CALD SEB NCDC DWM. Wrote the paper: TPM CALD SEB NCDC DWM.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0138939