Thanks to social media, taking a selfie with an exotic
animal has become the most popular aspect of wildlife tourism, but were these animals
well taken care of?
By: Ringo Bones
For just 10 US dollars or so, a typical tourist could take a
selfie with an exotic animal like elephants, tigers and even ones on the
endangered species list for the purposes of posting on their Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram or other social media account. But unbeknownst to the “casual wildlife
tourist” there is actually a dearth of information when it comes to whether
these wildlife tourism providers actually provide actual animal welfare to
their animals.
According to the research commissioned by the World Animal
Protection from the University of Surrey back in 2018, just 21 of the 62 travel
trade associations researched had a page on their websites on sustainable
tourism. Of these 21 travel associations, only six are communicating anything
at all about animal welfare. Out of the six, only three travel associations had
what the researchers define as appropriate animal welfare programs. These three
included ABTA (UK’s largest travel association), ANVR (Dutch Association of
Travel Agents and Tour Operators) and GSTC (Travel organization). Only one of
the three travel trade associations (ANVR) is doing any monitoring of its
members to check if they implemented guidelines or not. Alarmingly, 16
associations in both their literature and on their websites featured
promotional pictures of wild animals, in many cases being cruelly used to interact
with tourists.
More than 550,000 captive wild animals worldwide, including
elephants, sloths, tigers and dolphins endure appalling cruelty for tourist
entertainment. For most wild animals, the cruelty involves being snatched from
the wild then trained with beatings, living in severely inadequate conditions,
being chained and isolated. These wild animals are forced to have contact with
people, often causing them to have psychological trauma.
