We all have it. The call of the wild. But as unethical wildlife experiences are increasingly exposed, and the lack of education for both travelers and the industry at large is revealed, the urgency to review interactions with animals whilest on holiday is set to gain pace.

Whether it’s the slow realization that ‘we are nature’, not separate from it (long known by Indigenous peoples) or that the human race is tapping into a deeper sense of empathy and humility, this long overdue ‘wake up’ to the suffering endured by animals in tourism deserves our attention.

Over 500,000 wild animals worldwide, including elephants, lions, tigers, snakes, sloths, and dolphins, are suffering in the name of so-called ‘entertainment’.

These perfectly packaged experiences often fail to share with tourists that ‘training’ a wild animal involves beatings, that once people leave the venue animals are left in severely inadequate living conditions, or of the unnatural contact forced upon these animals daily. Not only a great disservice to their well-being but to how a child or adult might interpret what ‘natural behavior’ really looks like.

While positive interactions between humans and animals do exist in natural environments, some tourist attractions and even ‘sanctuaries’ that do not exhibit best practices can jeopardize both the animals' welfare and the human experience.

For most people, it’s obvious that if you love dolphins you don't swim with them. If you love tigers, you don’t pose for a selfie with one. And if you love elephants, you don’t jump on for a ride.

But what about beyond the obvious? What about other unethical practices? How can we navigate wildlife tourism with more compassion and confidence? What questions must we ask and what useful resources already exist?

Let's begin with the outright no-nos. The run for the hills kind of offers. The experiences that will only result in a deep knowing of wrongness, an unsettled stomach once it’s all over.

Below we’ll navigate through the more obvious to the less so. By no means an exhaustive list, this is simply an invitation to start somewhere and spread the word.

The More Obvious

ELEPHANT RIDING, WASHING, OR FEEDING

Elephants are not domesticated animals; to keep them safe around humans they’ll likely have undergone a traumatic training method known as the ‘crush’. What might seem like a harmless opportunity to interact is hiding a lifetime of trauma.

Washing and feeding elephants is often seen as a softer interaction than riding but this isn’t the whole story. Imagine for a moment standing for hours, having your skin scrubbed and immersed in water, how would you feel? And for the feeding, best compare this to yourself sitting on a sofa all day being fed sugary foods and expecting to be healthy. A free-roaming elephant will self-medicate in the forest and digest a huge diversity of plants. "We've observed from our free roaming elephants that they forage across no less than 165 different species of plants, when you compare that to elephants in camps and even some sanctuaries, fed high sugar food such as sugar cane and bananas, it’s no wonder they have health issues.” Kerri McCrea, Kindred Spirit Elephant Sanctuary.

Observation elephant sanctuaries in Thailand: Kindred Elephant Sanctuary, ChangChill and Following Giants

MARINE PARKS HOLDING CAPTIVE DOLPHINS AND WHALES

These venues are only interested in one thing, money. Forcing intelligent animals to live in chlorinated glass cages or small concrete pools is not an adequate replacement for the vast ocean.

***There are 3 very common justifications that these venues and resorts use to justify their greed including:***

1) **“It’s Educational”** - With a dolphin performing circus tricks or ballroom dancing with their trainer, what educational value is there to gain from this? It is much better to watch a wild dolphin pod in their natural habitat.
2) “**It’s For Conservation and Research”** - People visit these marine parks because they genuinely love animals. These venues prey upon this love of animals, spoon-feeding lies with a sprinkle of greenwashing. “Research shows less than 5-10% of zoos, aquariums, dolphinariums, have substantial conservation programs, and of those the amount spent on conservation is often less than 1%, and this is a multi-billion dollar industry,” Kathy Wise, World Animal Protection. Beyond this, 80% of the dolphins in these entertainment venues are bottlenose, which aren’t endangered, and therefore don’t need a breeding program. Moreover, there is no plan to release them.
3) “**The Animal’s Welfare Is Top Priority”** - The 2 images below share the true priorities of these parks. The chlorine added into the tanks to help visitors see them more clearly—, the lack of enrichment in the pools, the architecture, the entire experience is about the visitors’ experience. The car park vs. the tank size at Seaworld and the difference in depth between captive and wild dolphins below says more than words ever could.

WALKING WITH LIONS OR CHEETAHS

The lifecycle of a lion begins with cubs most often taken from their mothers. Lionesses are forced into an intensive breeding cycle to produce 2-3 litters per year. With the cub used for petting and selfies, whether that be via day trips or Voluntourism, it’s a lucrative business. Once these cubs become too dangerous for direct handling, they are used for lion walks. The lions that ‘walk’ with tourists have been denied their natural lives, hand-reared to develop the necessary strong bond with humans (Hunter et al., 2013). The final part of the lifecycle is that these majestic lions are sent to camps to be shot by trophy hunters or sold to zoos or breeders.

**To find a genuine big cat voluntourism program it’s worth asking:**

Where did the animals come from?
Are they bred?
Are the lions, tigers, or cheetahs used for hands-on interactions?
What is the purpose of the venue?
What are the animal welfare standards they hold?

The Less Obvious

WILDLIFE SELFIES

Following an international survey that listed Costa Rica as the 7th worst location for inappropriate wildlife photos, Costa Rica’s tourism sector launched a campaign to stop animal selfies with the help of World Animal Protection. Venues that offer selfies or direct interaction with wild animals are an instant red flag. Sloths used for photo opportunities are very likely to have either been taken from the wild or bred unnaturally.

**Top Tip:**

A 'bad' wildlife selfie is an image or post in which a wild animal is being held, touched, restrained or baited for the purpose of being a photo prop. A 'good' wildlife selfie is one in which there has been no direct human contact and the animal was not being restrained or kept in captivity to be used as a photo prop.

SANCTUARIES

The word sanctuary and its meaning are slowly being eroded. Not every sanctuary is what it seems. Kerri McCrea, founder of Kindred Spirit Elephant Sanctuary shared in an online event hosted by Kiwano Tourism that “The word sanctuary in Thailand has been picked up by marketing teams to attract tourists. There is no policy or welfare standard in which a venue has to meet to call itself a sanctuary, it’s purely for marketing purposes”. The key signal for a genuine sanctuary is a place that enables wildlife to exhibit their natural behaviors, as much as possible, and one that adopts the 5 freedoms.

**The 5 Freedoms**

**Freedom from hunger and thirst**
**Freedom from discomfort**
**Freedom from pain, injury, or disease**
**Freedom to express normal behavior**
**Freedom from fear and distress**

The introduction of ‘Wildlife Heritage Areas’, a global program developed by World Animal Protection and the World Cetacean Alliance, is one of the most exciting resources out there to help steer holidaymakers and tour operators to the solutions. Places that focus on the importance of ‘education’ as opposed to ‘entertainment’ in the name of tourism. A growing directory of ethical wildlife experiences that not only support local economies but also serves to reinforce conservation and the topic of animal welfare - wildlifeheritageareas.org/

About Rebecca

Co-founder of KiwanoTourism.com and The Tourism RESET Podcast

Rebecca Woolford is an online educator, filmmaker, and conservationist. She is an advocate for using the power of education to transform the tourism industry. To date, she's supported over 400 travel professionals to lean into making travel a force for good. Rebecca is the founder of Kiwano Tourism, the Tourism RESET Podcast, and an annual ‘Hike For Nature’ in which she embarks on a challenging adventure. From 100-mile thru-hikes, climbing 5 of the highest peaks in the UK in winter, to traversing across Slovenia’s mountainous terrain covering distances female wildlife rangers walk every day to raise awareness and critical funds on the war on nature.

Rethinking Wildlife Tourism: From Entertaining to Educational Experiences