Eco-Tourism Is No Vacation for the Animals

For nature-loving, animal-loving travelers, eco-tourism seems the like perfect vacation. You get to travel to a beautiful place where you avoid the tourist traps in favor of an up-close-and-personal experience with nature. Your tourist dollars support the local economy of a developing nation, as well as helping preserve habitat and protect endangered species. Sounds like a dream vacation, right? Well, not quite for the animals.

A year-long study showed that eco-tourists are getting too close to gorillas, stressing out the animals, disrupting their routines, and causing them to react aggressively. Great apes are also vulnerable to human diseases — one tourist with the sniffles could wipe out an entire family group. (To add insult to injury, the Guardian UK reports: "Not only do tourists disturb the animals, but so do research teams studying the animals' behaviour and their interactions with tourists.") 

A similar study was conducted by British researchers on how bottlenose dolphins are affected by tourists. There are two types of swim with the dolphins programs: captive and wild. The captive programs have all the same ethical issues associated with any other marine mammal captivity — the animals are taken from the wild just to be used for human entertainment, and are often subjected to cruelty during capture and training. But what about the programs that take people to swim with dolphins in the wild?

Like the gorilla encounters, the dolphin swims are stressful for the animals. Dolphins are social, curious animals, so their interactions with humans are often interpreted as willing participation. But humans diving into their territory disrupts natural resting and feeding patterns, as well as socialization among themselves. Swimming with the dolphins often takes place where the animals go to seek refuge from predators, so when humans enter the water, dolphins are left with the choice between leaving their home at the risk of getting eaten, or tolerating tourists.

It's easy to say "Just stay home and send money to a wildlife conservation group." But it doesn't work that way. Conservation groups were the first ones to take travelers on wildlife encounters because it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience for donors that makes them want to give more. People may choose to just send money, but it won't be nearly as much as after they've seen their impact firsthand.

Now that eco-tourism has become more mainstream, there's a lot more disruption in the animals' lives. But before you go blaming commercialization, that increased traffic is not only an important source of local income, but it's also a deterrent for poachers and is motivating governments to invest in conservation. If it disappeared, they'd look for another source of income and, if history is any indication, it wouldn't be very eco-friendly or animal-friendly. There's no simple answer.

Michelle Klailova of Stirling University, who led the study on tourists and gorillas in the Central African Republic, says the current recommendation of staying at least seven meters away protects the gorillas from disease (and, presumably, the humans from the gorillas, though an angry silverback would close that gap pretty quickly), but to lower the animals' stress, the minimum should be increased to at least eighteen meters. But she says the greater distance "is not a realistic goal in dense forests, particularly for tourists who have spent valuable time and effort to see the gorillas."

And there's the crux of the issue: What is eco-tourism really about? Are eco-tourists looking to make a difference or do they just want a really cool vacation? If it's the former, then they should have no problem respecting the extra eleven meters and whatever other protections need to be put in place for the animals. Eco-tourism has done a lot of good for conservation, but even eco-travelers need to remember that they're guests.

Photo credit: Stefan Thiesen