Wild life tourism for nature’s lover is not merely means achieving enjoyment of watching animals or birds but it is more than that. It means coming out of the confines of the four walls of the city blues and entering into the entire different world of nature where every thing is fresh, captivating and soul soothing. Wild life tourism is different for different wild life lovers. Taking a glimpse of birds flying from the yard, squirrel making a dash on the top of the tree, simply watching butterfly fluttering on the flowers but for some, wildlife means actually going into the wonderlands of the wild that could mean going to sanctuaries, forest areas, rivers or seas and into the wilderness of mountains. Looking at its popularity, governments of various countries of the world are laying special emphasis to encourage more and more nature lovers to have a real essence and feeling of wild life in its miscellany.
Wildlife tourism has incorporated all types of natural tourism including adventure and ecotourism involving hunting and fishing, zoos and aquaria and wildlife observations and photography. All these forms of tourism demand proper management of not only quantum and quality of tourists entering into the vicinity of their wildlife areas but also the impact tourism has on the wildlife settings and environment and on specific species. Besides people who are specially seeking the wild life, the preservation of wild life areas provides best recreational facilities even for hikers, campers and for explorers. (Newsome, Dowling & Moore 2005: 18).
In short, wildlife tourism is taken to observe and enjoy the wildlife whether it is in the form of captive or semi captive or in the wilderness of nature. People’s appreciation for the wildlife arise due to their curiosity for the wildlife but more than that number of issues concerning them and the impact that the relationship between the nature and man has created on man like environmental degradation, biological diversity, sustainability in the ecology etc. Owing to the urban life and their isolation from the natural world also increase their curiosity towards the natural world, as it seems to them something mysterious and adventurous. And it is also true as more we try to explore the mystery of nature, we are aroused and more curious we become. Children also have a special attraction for the wild life and in its mysterious world.
The fascination of human beings with the animals is centuries old yet the concept wildlife has taken into shape only century back. According to Malcolm Hunter’s wildlife history, the term wildlife is just one century old but was included in main dictionaries only in 1961 in United States and before 1986 in United Kingdom. But we could see its first use in the book titled Our Vanishing Wild Life in 1913, which focused the attention on the conservation crises during 20th century. However, this term wildlife was used in the context of the game species and it also included vertebrate species not considered as game rather perceived as human harvesting or culling. (Newsome, Dowling & Moore 2005: 1) But now this concept is used to incorporate various programs and initiatives that government undertakes to boost and give directions to the wildlife lovers enabling them to enjoy more wild life with ease.
The tourism of wild life should be looked in the way it is creating an impact on the ecological balance in the nature and also on the economy of the whole nation. Wild life tourism takes variety of forms and so the impact it creates also varies. For e.g. sport hunting has been allowed in various places as a game with the ideology of various officials that humans should be allowed for hunting as they never damage the wild life resources. This type of hunting includes fish hunting and big game hunting. This kind of hunting has got the support of environmentalists who state that it would help in preservation of biological diversity by helping in the conservation of other natural species. While others strictly oppose such kind of hunting because they feel that it would reduce the genetic quality of remaining wild life population because hunters often kill largest and wildest wild animals. It is also true that nature maintains its own ecological balance and improves the quality of the species by eliminating weak and sick. As the real motive of wildlife tourism is conservation of resources therefore there is no solid reason to give approval to hunting.
Weaver differentiates the tourism in two parts consumptive and non-consumptive. Consumptive means hunting and fishing whereas non-consumptive means bird watching, photographing of animals and other species etc. (Newsome, Dowling & Moore 2005: 5) Currently more is being emphasized on the non-consumptive means of tourism which includes wildlife watching similar to that of game ranches in South Africa where the wild animals are allowed to roam freely and the people are able to watch there favorite animals with full protection and security. There has been a tremendous growth in wild life watching in all these decades. It has increased from 441 million in 1990 to 763 million in 2004 with 52 per cent of these tourists belonged to the recreational and leisure tourism. The growth of international tourists continues and an estimate is that they would reach 1.6 billion in 2020. Besides, there also has been tremendous growth in domestic tourism and according to rough estimates it is even more than international tourism. Equivalent is the growth of wildlife tourism with the growth in wildlife watching. This all has been due to the impact of commercialization that has enabled the wildlife watching filled with fun and excitement. (Tapper 2005: 12).
Tourism Department of the government and other private tourist operators create an environment and facilitate tourists for observations and interaction with wildlife and the ways they adopt have a great impact on wildlife, tourists, and in relation between the two. There were also efforts to encourage tourists to provide food to wildlife that has created a wide spread controversy. The trend has shown both the negative and positive results. The dependency of animal for food on man has increased and also on the human contact. Number of accidents has also increased on owing to the close interaction between the man and animals. Many cases have come to light that show the negative impact from feeding artificial food to wildlife yet in many cases there are psychological, social and economic impacts on humans and in some cases on animals too. Man feels pleasure and satisfaction while feeding animals and they feel themselves closely related to them. Naturally when man enjoys feeding the animals, his visits to the natural reserves would increase and that would ultimately increase the government’s exchequer. But it has deteriorating impact on the health of animals by eating the unnatural food and may cause injuries or diseases to animals. If we weigh the advantages and disadvantages, we would find that though there is considerable number of advantages of making the wild life tourism a national and international agenda yet our lackadaisical approach has turned the whole industry as the most dangerous concept for the wild life.
The desire to increase the possibility and closeness between the man and animals has led to the deliberate habituation of certain species, sometimes with encounters deliberately staged for human beings. Any wild animal can get habituated if it is slowly moulded and conditioned so that it is able to take and accept the presence of human intruders. This process is beneficial to both the animals and man as they could feel the existence and relate to each other without disturbance to any one of them. In this way, animals may feel humans harmless and friendly. For e.g. In the biological reserves of Costa Rica’s Carara, scarlet macaws and white faced capuchin monkeys are very tolerant towards their visitors and stay very close to them without any effect on their habits or behavior. But large number of visitors can also have an undesirable effect on their habitat. Watching cheetahs draped on the tourist’s vehicle is the most common site as cheetahs are now no longer scared of man but it is costing them dearly as this activity is indirectly reducing their species. (Shackley 1996: 26).
According to Duffus and Dearden, “the extent to the impact of tourism on wild life can be related to the type of tourist activity and the level of the tourism development”. (Holden 2008: 88) Further Mathieson and Wall also said “that the resilience of wild life to the presence of humans will influence the degree to which tourism proves harmful to a particular species.” For e.g. the kind of Safari tourism that is being practiced in the Serengeti Park on the Kenyan/Tanzanian border has developed their level of tourism to a considerable degree. Local tourists operators take their tourists in their minibuses and animals most of the time are surrounded by 30 to 40 vehicles full of tourists and maximum of them taking photographs. This intrusion into their area and the noise created by the traffic raises the stress in animals, which can create disturbance in their breeding and eating patterns. (Holden, 2008: 88).
Secondly the danger towards the wildlife is more direct especially in those areas where there is no idea on the level of education. There is a great danger to corals on account of the lackadaisical approach by both tourist’s operators and tourists. Tourist operators plying visitors by boats would drag their anchors through corals causing extensive damage. They would often stand on these corals and touch them causing more damage to this smallest yet most important family member of nature. Besides shells are collected by locals to sell the same to tourists like in the areas around Red Sea, Caribbean and off the coast of Kenya. The most crucial factors for their attitudes are their poverty level, the extent of the provisions of government, economic opportunity and lack of environmental education. Carelessness shown by tourists also affect the behavior of wild life like littering by the tourists can cause death to the animals and can also attract predators of endemic species into areas where they would normally go, as many elephants have been killed by zinc batteries thrown on the rubbish heaps surrounding the outskirts of lodges in the Massai Mara in Kenya. In the Cairngrom mountains of Scotland, foxes are easily tempted into the area for the indigenous ptarmigan and groused leading to their increasing decline in numbers. These foxes are their predators. (Holden 2008: 89).
Some natural resources on which tourists are dependent upon have characteristics quiet similar. It becomes difficult for the indigenous and local population to make avail of these resources on which their whole existence is dependent. Any land transformed for attracting tourists or any commercialized tourists activity destroy the ecological balance and harmony in the nature. For e.g. coastal wetlands have been drained for the development of hotels in Kenya. Caribbean has seen tremendous amount of loss of beech and coral reef ecosystems and there is also continuous deforestation along the mountainsides in Alps in Europe and Himalayas in Asia owing to the tourism. Besides tourist’s intrusions have led to the disruption to the breeding patterns of many of animal species especially in Massai, Kenya.
Pollution caused by increasing number of tourist’s causes lot more detrimental effects on the environment and the wild life, which is so natural and pure. The increasing number of domestic and international flights has increased the level of carbondioxide in the atmosphere leading to global warming and it has also been found that air transport emits nitrogen oxides, which is responsible for reducing ozone concentration in the stratosphere. These emissions of nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbons at lower levels create smog by forming low-level ozone in summers causing health problems. (Holden 2008: 94). Air transport is the smallest part in the whole game of tourist’s operations; there are many more activities being undertaken by tourist’s operators to attract tourists. In Europe, 83 percent of the total passenger tourists are travelling by their own cars emitting lot more quantity of harmful gases causing danger of global warming. Tourists as far as Northern Europe such as Germany, Scandinavia, and the Benelux countries take a drive to the Mediterranean coast on their vacation. Transit traffic is one of the gravest problems within Alpine area. The quality of the air is destroyed as a consequence of both extra traffic and construction. (Holden 2008: 95) Aesthetic pollution is also one of the gravest concern for environmentalists especially the urbanization of the coasts. The Creole homes have been taken up by the homes constructed with varied architectural styles and display of posters. The construction of hotels, apartments, ski lifts and pistas are emerging causing detrimental effect to the environment. These activities not only cause detrimental effect on the ecological balance but also on visual impact what is known as un-spoilt or undeveloped landscape. For e.g. consequences about the ecological imbalance led Mishan to write in 1969, “once serene and lovely towns of Andorra and Biarritz are now smothered with new hotels and the dust and roar of motorized traffic.” (Holden 2008: 67).
Despite all these disadvantages, wildlife tourism has its own level of advantages and is of great economic value to the local population. Tourists pay significant amount of money to observe particular species of animals and nature. Almost one in every five United States residents has eagerness for bird watching and enjoys the recreational activities and more than 40 per cent take a trip away from home to specially watch birds. It was estimated that expenses involved in the process of watching wild life amount to billions of dollars especially on food, transportation costs and accommodation. (Tapper 2005, 24) The tourism contributes towards the overall economic development of the area in the way of the income earned from tourists who are willing to pay charges for just viewing wild life and besides other expenses that occur on account to their accommodation and fees towards the tourist’s guides. The economic benefits provide further incentives to further conserve the forest areas and habitat of wild life.
Now the trend of eco tourism is also catching up to maintain a balance between the tourism and the protection of wild life. Eco tourism implies tourists to come closer to the wilderness, yet on the same hand prevents deterioration of the natural resources. Its main objective is the process of preserving and maintaining the sustainability of the nature. It welcomes the visitors and allows them entertainment and at the same time supports the cultures of the native people. It increases the importance of local culture and enhances their place in the world, enhances the adventurous spree into the deep wild areas, helps in the self-development and learning many new different ways to adopt and adjust and feel closeness towards the wild. It especially involves the visits to flora, fauna, and areas of cultural importance and for the benefit of tourists and wild life, tourist’s operators and government department of tourism make programs that reduce the harmful affects of traditional ways of tourism and help in increasing the cultural integrity of people. Besides it helps in the promotion of recycling, efficient use of energy, water reuse and provide economic opportunities to the local communities bringing them into the main stream of Eco-tourism. (Fennel 2008: 19).
Wild life tourism is also helping in the community development. In many places like in East Africa, the Seychelles or the Galapagos islands, their tourism is dependent on the wildlife itself and helps in the community development in further remote areas. Tapper 2005: 39) For e.g. tremendous increase in the whale watching had a beneficial effect on the 495 communities all over the world. Some of the studies showed that the many people watching whale shows in and around Sydney, and Australia have nearly doubled and total expenditure has also increased manifold. This kind of tourism can contribute in the conservation process of wildlife. This would increase the awareness about these animals and their habitats, and along with that it would increase the revenue and jobs for the local people. (Deda 2007: Online).
Since the man has born on this earth, there has been a strong bond between the two, which unfortunately got broken due to the advent of industrialization and urbanization. People got more mechanized and remained aloof from the very nature into the laps of which he was born casually breaking all the ties with it. But slowly this trend got suddenly changed as the government and tourist’s department took the wilderness into their homes making them aware of the privileges and benefits they would enjoy. This raised the consciousness of the people to come close to the nature and have a feeling of belongingness towards it. This feeling is now showing the result, as more and more people are moving into the wilderness to capture it in their memory and photographs and carry them back into their own mechanical world.
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