While wild­life tour­ism products such as safar­is can help pro­tect anim­als and their wil­der­ness hab­it­ats by gen­er­at­ing income for con­ser­va­tion and work for loc­als, there are issues. This accord­ing to Isa­belle Szott and Nic­ola F Koy­ama of Liv­er­pool John Moores Uni­ver­sity writ­ing for The Con­ver­sa­tion.

Going on safari in Africa offers tour­ists the oppor­tun­ity to see some of the most spec­tac­u­lar wild­life on Earth – includ­ing Afric­an ele­phants (Lox­odonta afric­ana). Known for their com­plex social sys­tems, long memory and high intel­li­gence, this spe­cies is also threatened by poach­ing and shrink­ing hab­it­ats, so fur­ther dis­turb­ance to their pre­cari­ous exist­ence could have ser­i­ous con­sequences.

Wild­life tour­ism can help pro­tect these anim­als and their hab­it­at by gen­er­at­ing income for con­ser­va­tion and provid­ing stable work in loc­al eco­nom­ies. Coun­tries such as South Africa and Kenya receive two to five mil­lion vis­it­ors to pro­tec­ted areas each year, gen­er­at­ing receipts of up to USD$90m. But as it becomes more pop­u­lar world­wide, it’s worth remem­ber­ing that we often don’t know how tour­ism affects the anim­als we observe.

The tourist in the room

In Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa, tour­ists stay in lodges with­in the park and go on safari twice a day in large, open vehicles driv­en by pro­fes­sion­al field guides.

Over 15 months in Madikwe, we recor­ded how often ele­phants per­formed stress-related, vigil­ant or aggress­ive beha­viours to find out wheth­er they increased dur­ing months when there were more tour­ists. Vigil­ant beha­viour could be an ele­phant extend­ing its trunk into the air to smell. Stress-related beha­viour included ele­phants bunch­ing togeth­er or fleet­ingly touch­ing their faces with their trunks – a response akin to a nervous tic in humans. Aggres­sion was noted, for example, if an ele­phant charged at anoth­er, spread its ears to appear lar­ger or hit anoth­er ele­phant with its tusk. We also watched the move­ments of ele­phant herds to see if they stuck around or moved away from tour­ist vehicles.

Was this ele­phant dis­turbed while bathing so is sniff­ing out a threat? Image by Mag­da Ehlers (“free to use”) via Pexels.

We found that ele­phants were more likely to be aggress­ive towards oth­er ele­phants in months when tour­ist num­bers in the park were high. Ele­phant herds were also more likely to move away from tour­ist vehicles when there were more vehicles present.

So, it appears that tour­ism does have some impact on ele­phant wel­fare – but this may not be entirely bad news. We didn’t observe an increase in stressed or vigil­ant beha­viour in response to high­er num­bers of tour­ists, and the effect of increased aggres­sion was small. Hunt­ing can have much great­er effects on ele­phants, even among those who aren’t attacked by humans. Stud­ies which meas­ured levels of stress hor­mones in ele­phants after they wit­nessed hunts or were nearby have found they increase sig­ni­fic­antly. Humans rid­ing on the backs of ele­phants is also much worse for ele­phant wel­fare than obser­va­tion tours. Wild­life watch­ing, without phys­ic­al con­tact, seems to be the bet­ter mode of tour­ism for ele­phant wel­fare, but it’s not without its con­cerns.

Is tourism the ultimate answer?

Although these res­ults were inter­est­ing, they are only from a single pop­u­la­tion in South Africa where driv­ing reg­u­la­tions were enforced. We don’t know how ele­phants are affected in areas where tour­ists drive their private vehicles on safari unac­com­pan­ied by pro­fes­sion­al guides. We also don’t know what exactly was caus­ing the changes in beha­viour. More tour­ists per month meant there were more vehicles on the roads, but also more air traffic, more diverse smells and sounds and who knows what else.

Parks could cre­ate refuge areas where safari tours are restric­ted and con­tact with wild­life min­im­ised, per­haps in areas where there are few­er roads already. Tour com­pan­ies could strictly enforce a no off-road­ing rule here and pro­hib­it guided walks by tour­ists. Such refuge areas have pre­vi­ously been shown to have great poten­tial in redu­cing pres­sure on ele­phants dur­ing times of increased stress, such as fol­low­ing large wild­fires.

Tour­ism can be a great con­ser­va­tion tool as long as it is mon­itored closely, and meas­ures are taken to alle­vi­ate the poten­tial pres­sures it can put on anim­als. If you’re ever lucky enough to find your­self on a safari, think twice about get­ting up close and per­son­al with that icon­ic spe­cies. Instead, keep your dis­tance and the wel­fare of the anim­als in mind.

Afric­an ele­phants drink­ing at a water­hole in Mapun­gub­we Nation­al Park, South Africa by Derek Keats (CC BY 2.0) via Wiki­pe­dia. “GT” cropped it.

This art­icle by Isa­belle Szott, PhD Can­did­ate in Con­ser­va­tion Bio­logy, and Nic­ola F. Koy­ama, Seni­or Lec­turer in Nat­ur­al Sci­ences and Psy­cho­logy, both of Liv­er­pool John Moores Uni­ver­sity, was ori­gin­ally pub­lished on The Con­ver­sa­tion, March 20, 2019. It has been repub­lished on the “GT” Blog under a Cre­at­ive Com­mons license. (The “GT” Blog used dif­fer­ent images and changed the head­line to make it slightly short­er.) Read the ori­gin­al art­icle.

Fea­tured image: “Cranky ele­phant charges our car in Tarangir­ie Nation­al Park, Tan­zania” –Ben & Gab (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr. “GT” cropped it.