Wildlife tourism is big business, and the people who own businesses that include this type of tourism often try to claim that it has a direct link with increasing the knowledge, attitude and willingness of conservation efforts for the people who partake in this type of tourism.
A safari in Africa is probably one of the most common types of wildlife tourism. Image by Laika ac, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
It does of course make sense, but there are also some arguments against it. The main one is that no study has really shown that this link exist. The people who argues that it does not affect conservation efforts often use the argument that wildlife tourism tend to “preach to the converted”, meaning that people who spend money on the wildlife tourism already has made up their mind, while those who generally oppose it have no plan to try wildlife tourism.
Up until very recently this debate has been ruled by arguments and opinions, but a paper posted in the Marine Policy journal finally bring some evidence to the discussion!
Seeing sharks in a shark cage leads to higher conservation effort!
Southern Cross University PhD student Kirin Apps and Dr. Charlie Huveneers of Flinders University have been working on a project where they wanted to find out how peoples’ view of shark conservation changed after having dived in a shark cage. They surveyed 783 different people who dived in them, and 54 % of these agreed for the scientists to contact them later and ask them of their views on the matter.
Tourists swimming in a shark cage to experience the sharks up-close. Image by Flickr user kalanz, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
After the initial survey they waited for several months, and in some cases even several years before contacting them. A total of 136 of the participants responded for a follow-up survey, which was enough to give the research team a good indication of what has changed.
The report shows that there is a significant increase in the awareness of threats towards sharks. Not only that, but the participants had also increased their engagement by joining anti-shark killing groups on social media, had a better understanding of the role of the shark in the ecosystem, were more likely to sign shark conservation petitions, and were more likely to promote shark conservation to friends and coworkers.
All in all it seemed like the people who had dived in a shark cage were much more concerned with shark conservation even a long time after the dive!
Why look at shark diving, and not safaris?
One of the unique features of shark diving compared to for example safaris is that many people reported to dive with the sharks as a thrilling activity. They did not necessarily care much about the sharks, but just wanted to experience the thrill of diving next to a huge predator that could potentially kill and eat them (but that is of course very unlikely).
This meant that the researcher were able to take a group that did not care too much about a certain type of conservation effort and measure how/if this experienced affected their view on the matter.
While this does not conclude that all wildlife tourism has an increased conservation effort, it is a good indication that it can be beneficial in some cases.
A Great White Shark; the biggest and most dangerous of them all! Image by Terry Goss, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Conservation effort is not all we should care about
While this does provide some evidence that wildlife tourism can make people care more about conserving the species they experience, this is not the only factor that should be used when discussion wildlife tourism. There are many other factors to including, such as:
- Impacts of feeding patterns.
- Impacts of breeding patterns.
- How it affects the animals, such as are they scared when tourists visit? This could lead to a higher mortality rate or other problems.
- Do the tourism affect the ecosystem of the area without knowing?
I won’t go into much detail about these issues in this post, but just keep in mind that many other things affect the total benefit or cost of having wildlife tourism.
Thanks for reading
Thanks for reading about how diving with sharks can affect people attitudes towards conservation effort of the sharks. I hope you learned something new, and maybe even made up your mind in regards to how you feel about wildlife tourism. Feel free to leave a comment below if you got any opinions or idea about this and want to share it with the rest of us!
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