Managing Negative Effects of Wildlife Tourism on Wildlife Flashcards
Management Actions:
- Two main areas to address in terms of management plans?
- What they attempt to manage
- How they attempt to do this ?
* *manage people or wildlife…minimize impact! <- usually directed to tourists
What should be Managed?:
- Directed at either?(2)
- The people
2. wildlife or habitat
What should be Managed?:
- Goal is to do what? Emphasis on?
- minimize negative effects on wildlife
- usually an emphasis on managing visitors
L> either directly or through operators
Managing Wildlife and Habitats:
-Limiting the environment is often referred to as ?
- hardening and usually involves physical structures
* *treat people like cattle…go through a maze but don’t get off the path
Managing Wildlife and Habitats:
- Examples of hardening the environment?
- fencing
- boardwalks
- modifications of roads
- signs
- use of blinds
L> box….animal can’t see you in this so you do not scare off animals that are attuned with the environment
Managing Wildlife and Habitats:
- Who else can hardening the environment be done to?
- wildlife
L> this is done through some form of conditioning
Managing Wildlife and Habitats:
- Hardening of wildlife via conditioning??
L> Adverse conditioning?
- reduce habituation of animals
- train to avoid ( adverse conditioning)
L> certain sounds or lights
L> chasing or enticing animals away
*** this makes it so animals still exert caution
Managing Wildlife and Habitats:
- Managing to mitigate the effects of the disturbance. What in the disturbance is tried to be mitigated ?
intensity, duration, frequency, predictability, timing or scale
Managing Wildlife and Habitats:
- Managing to mitigate the effects of the disturbance(intensity, duration, frequency, predictability, timing or scale). What are some ways to do this?
- number of visitors ( ecological carrying capacity)
- spatial distribution ( keep tourists out of sensitive areas)
- Temporal distribution ( certain times of the year etc)
- Behaviour ( noise levels low, distance from wildlife etc)
- Expectations of visitors ( high, low)
L> very important one! ( Americans, Germans and Dutch are the worst for this!) - Attitudes ( getting closer than allowed)
- Design of experience (many methods)
L> what do you want ppl to get out of this! - Involvement ( operators and tourist in conservation)
L> Tourists in particular bc they hopefully take the message home and share it!
Managing Wildlife and Habitats:
- Managing to mitigate the effects of the disturbance(intensity, duration, frequency, predictability, timing or scale). In terms of involvement in conservation who seems to be the biggest presence?
- past hunters/poachers tend to be the biggest pro conservationists!
Managing Wildlife and Habitats:
- Managing to mitigate the effects of the disturbance(intensity, duration, frequency, predictability, timing or scale).
L> Ecological Carrying capacity?
The carrying capacity of a biological species in an environment is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment.
**BEFORE adverse effects are seen
How is management carried out? (9)
- physical alterations: structures etc
- Active management of wildlife and environment (research, study sites, variables, controls etc)
- External regulation: government bodies
- Self-regulation: think of bay of fundy whale watching
- Economic instruments: charging fees etc
- Education: key for ecotourism…educate them in away that they do not feel like they are being educated!
- Marketing : expectations of your visit…make it more than just the animals! experience overall
- Operators and guides
- Cooperation/agreements : different levels of government cooperating together making agreements…including international gobs since animals migrate across boundaries.
Griffith University study investigating what?
- the effect stress has on sex drive of koalas could stop public handling go animals in theme parks
What did griffith university find out about the koalas in terms of up close encounters?
- noise, up close encounters
- more vigilant
- stress is energy costing
- low energy diet= leaves…lots of sleep 20 hours a day..normally.
- not breeding properly…being more stressful…energy need increases….etc body is in overdrive…suppressing immune system
What is an Ethogram?
- baseline of behaviours…a catalogue
- descriptions of them(very clear, discrete and descriptive)
- they are used to compare behaviour when tourists are present !
- if they are becoming more frequent and at longer periods of time = stressed out..increased energy use
- they use codes in these!…ex: Al= alarmed
- no anthropogenic flare! aka describe the process not using words we attribute human characteristics to…such as friendly….. DO NOT NAME THE SUBJECTS EVER.
Can you take the behaviours from comparing the ethogram to other behaviour occurrences to make assumptions on physiological responses?
- yep
- can make speculation on physiology from this! BUT req actual testing for confirmation…ie blood test!
Do you use your past ethograms or make up a new one?
make your own
Are behaviour and physiology on a continuum?
yep
behaviour is driven by physiology
Education:
- Often effective in increasing what?
- knowledge, favourable attitudes and positive behavioural intentions about rule
Education:
- Often effective in altering what?
- the places that recreationists visit
Education:
- Often prompts a reduction in?
- environmentally destructive practices at least in the short term!
- ** people are more environmentally aware in short term at least…..
- *education is important in reducing negative impact of wildlife
Monitoring:
- It is critical to what?
- sustainability
- without no way to assess the effects
Monitoring:
- What are two critical questions in designing a suitable monitoring program?
- What sampling design should be used? (how)
2. What indicators of effects on the wildlife should be used? (what)
How to monitor:
- If monitoring program is to reliably detect changes??
- And changes detected are valid, rather than the result of biases or other errors in sampling design. ( pick something you can actually detect!) **NO NAMING ANIMALS..
- The program is able to detect changes of sufficiently small magnitude to fulfil requirements..(ex hormones)
- Any changes detected are due to the tourism activity.
- don’t look for something that you won’t find….ie mating outside of mating season
How to monitor:
- whats the issue with naming animals?
- they start to seem to take on personality traits of the person you named them off…or by traits that remind you of someone… BIAS
…you start seeing what you want to see
How to monitor:
- Achieve Goals?
- experimental design
- statistical design
- *work out statistics before experimental design
How to monitor:
- Experimental design
L> interobserver reliability for sampling?
- two separate individuals observing …results should be the same if not….BAD
- make sure they are trained…so they are looking at the same thing for the same info!
How to monitor:
- Experimental design
L> Interobserver reliability
- Monitoring program should involve???
- use of control sites
- replication of control sites
- appropriate time intervals
- sampling for baseline
* *hardest thing to get…often tourism operation is well underway!…animals will get stressed out while handling
How to monitor:
- Statistical power? (how to achieve it)
- sufficient number of replicate sites ( do not have this option usually)
- sufficiently precise estimates of parameters
- sufficiently low levels of variation in parameters ( you want a study design that reduces variability around the mean)
- *do not use red or green in presentations…colour blind? …KISS
How to monitor:
-From Australian studies:
L> Studies rarely what?
- satisfy all or even most of the criteria
