15. Wildlife tourism and its role in local and national economies.

Question 1

Wildlife tourism

Answer 1

Wildlife tourism: is an encounter or engagement with non-domesticated animals.
It includes:
* Wildlife watching (free ranging)
* Hunting and fishing
* Captive wildlife (zoos, parks)
Consumptive (killing or capturing of wildlife, i.e. hunting (sports, subsistence, commercial), shooting, or fishing) vs. non-consumptive tourism (wildlife watching, photography, feeding and interaction in various ways)

Question 2

Goals of sustainable tourism

Answer 2

• Develop greater awareness and understanding of the significant contributions that tourism can make to environment and economy
• Promote equality and development
• Improve quality of life of the host community
• Provide the high-quality experience for the visitor
• Maintain the quality of the environment on which the foregoing objectives depend

Question 3

Roles to the economy of Wildlife/Nature

Answer 3

• Direct value:
  o Consumptive use value: non-market value – firewood, game
  o Productive use value: commercial value of timber, fish
• Indirect value:
  o Non-consumptive use value scientific research, bird watching
  o Option value: value of maintaining options available for the future
  o Existence value: value of ethical feelings of existence of wildlife

Question 4

POSITIVE ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF TOURISM:

Answer 4

• Increasing Community Support for Conservation
  This growing interest in wildlife tourism, and the economic benefits that come along with it, can change community attitudes towards conservation. Without tourism, local communities may merely view wild animals as a danger to their farms and families, and only value natural resources for consumption. But when animals and natural areas bring tourism dollars and jobs to their community, it can help residents see the importance of keeping their natural assets intact and healthy.
• Creating Sustainable Livelihoods
  Beyond changing mindsets, tourism can prevent ecosystem degradation by creating more sustainable livelihoods for local communities. Jobs as guides, cooks, or housekeepers offer alternative income sources to environmentally-destructive activities such as logging, slash-and-burn agriculture, quarrying, or illegal hunting/poaching.
• Raising Environmental Awareness of Tourists
  When people connect with nature during their travels, it can lead them to appreciate it more and become invested in protecting it. Tours, parks, and other travel experiences often facilitate this type of environmental learning through interpretive techniques such as educational brochures, exhibits, or guided excursions
• Prompting Conservation Policies & Protected Areas
  Tourism can also provide a compelling incentive for governments and organizations to institute environmental policies and conservation measures. This includes the creation of national parks, nature reserves, and other protected areas to preserve their biodiversity and correspondingly boost their tourism appeal.
• Aiding Ecosystem Monitoring
  While park rangers and guards play a critical role in patrolling sensitive environments, tracking ecosystem health, and warding off threats, it is often impossible for them to monitor such vast areas by themselves. The mere presence of tourists in natural areas can protect wildlife by providing an extra set of eyes on the ground.
• Advancing Green Technologies & Fueling Innovation
  Because of its economic importance and influence, tourism can trigger environmental innovation through the advancement of green infrastructure, processes, and technologies.
  For instance, tourism can lead the way in the development of renewable energy infrastructure, like wind and solar farms, on remote islands or rural areas that would not usually be exposed to clean energy.

In principle, wildlife tourism can have positive effects on wildlife and their habitats through one or more of the mechanisms listed below.
* Financial contributions: income derived from wildlife tourism activities can be channelled into conservation or animal welfare activities (section 3).
* Practical (in-kind) contributions: operators and/or tourists can contribute directly to conservation or animal welfare through their own practical conservation-related activities
* Socio-economic incentives for conservation: if wildlife tourism is perceived to have economic or social benefits that are greater than those of alternative land-uses, and to be reliant on preservation or rehabilitation of natural ecosystems, then this provides an incentive for conservation
* Education: as part of their wildlife tourism experience, visitors can be educated to increase their awareness of conservation or animal welfare issues and thus behave in ways which have positive consequences for wildlife and/or their habitats

Question 5

ECONOMY

Answer 5

1. Foreign exchange earnings (income for host country, investments)
2. Contribution to government revenues
3. Employment generation (Tourism supports some 7% of the world’s workers, can generate jobs directly related to tourism (hotels, restaurants etc.) and indirectly (suppliers of the tourism based industries)
   Economics of hunting:
   * Direct economic benefits: payments by hunters towards hunting, fees, equipment, accommodation
   * Environmental benefits: aspects related to the conservation activities, ecosystem retention and management
   * Social benefits: social and cultural activity in many rural areas, value in binding communities and well as offering useful social integration tools
   * Future benefits: hunting helps keep the link with the rural areas that serves to save the cultural knowledge and understanding for future generations
   * Opportunity costs: related mainly to the costs that would be incurred by governments in managing wildlife populations and paying for damages incurred by these populations

Question 6

Conservation Hunting

Answer 6

Benefits for local communities:
* Employment opportunities
* Important cultural exchanges
* Recognition and community pride in demonstrating special skills required for conservation hunting (subsistence and bushcraft skills)
* Game meat
Other benefits of conservation hunting:
* Light environmental footprint
* Low animal harvest and disturbance
* Minimal infrastructure is needed
* High to extreme selectivity of harvest (biological management plans)
* Contributes to robustness and sustainability of ecological/ cultural systems is less likely to fail when confronted with external disturbance, internal stresses, or market failure

Question 7

Banning Hunting

Answer 7

1977 Kenya banned commercial hunting = dismantling of a well-developed hunting industry and affecting a wide sector of the economy (It costs Kenya USD 31.5–63 million annually (2020 dollar values) in lost revenue)
Decline of 68% of wildlife in the last 40 years

Question 8

Economic dependence on tourism

Answer 8

• When a country or region becomes dependent for its economic survival upon one industry, it can put major stress upon this industry as well as the people involved to perform well.
• Many countries, especially developing countries with little ability to explore other resources, have embraced tourism as a way to boost the economy (e.g Gambia 30% of the workforce, In small island developing states 83% in the Maldives, 21% in the Seychelles and 34% in Jamaica)
• Over-reliance on tourism carries risks to tourism-dependent economies. Economic recession, the impacts of natural disasters such as tropical storms and changing tourism patterns can all have a devastating effect, COVID