Is the eco-tourism boom putting wildlife in a new kind of danger?

Date:October 9, 2015

Source:Cell Press

Many tourists today are drawn to the idea of vacationing in far-flung places around the globe where their dollars can make a positive impact on local people and local wildlife. But researchers writing in Trends in Ecology & Evolution on Oct. 9 say that all of those interactions between wild animals and friendly ecotourists eager to snap their pictures may inadvertently put animals at greater risk of being eaten.

It's clear that the ecotourism business is booming. "Recent data showed that protected areas around the globe receive 8 billion visitors per year; that's like each human on Earth visited a protected area once a year, and then some!" said Daniel Blumstein of the University of California, Los Angeles. "This massive amount of nature-based and eco-tourism can be added to the long list of drivers of human-induced rapid environmental change."

Blumstein says the new report sets out "a new way of thinking about possible long-term effects of nature-based tourism and encourages scientists and reserve managers to take into account these deleterious impacts to assess the sustainability of a type of tourism, which typically aims to enhance, not deplete, biodiversity."

The basic premise of the report is this--human presence changes the way animals act and those changes might spill over into other parts of their lives. Those changes in behavior and activity may put animals at risk in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

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