A Tale of Two Cats: Tourism
Humanity has an innate urge to explore. Whether that drive takes us out of our back door into a local state park or across the world on a treacherous adventure - the desire to discover what the Earth has to offer is a characteristic shared by many. While this trait may once have fueled dangerous voyages across unknown oceans or into deep tropical jungles, modern technology now offers us much safer options. Today, nature tourism has become one of the largest sectors within the travel and leisure industry.
This umbrella category of tourism encompasses a wide variety of travel. From ecotourism to trophy hunting, nature tourism includes any type of travel that is centered around experiences in our natural environments. With such a broad definition, exact calculations on the total economic contribution can be difficult. The World Bank’s most recent estimation of the total sector GDP came in just above $600 billion in 2015. Their research also found this sector to be the most rapidly growing type of travel. To put that figure into context, nature tourism generates more value for the global economy than the entire sports industry (approximately $395 billion in 2015).
One of the 4.5 million tourists that visit Yosemite National Park annually. Source: National Park Service
Within the greater domain of nature tourism, there are two overlapping sub-categories that particularly impact big cats. The first is wildlife tourism, which as the name implies, pertains to tourism focused specifically around the world's flora and fauna. It is estimated that wildlife tourism contributes just under one third of the total revenue across the nature tourism industry. The other type of travel important to big cats is ecotourism. Over the past decade, the term “ecotourism” has become a buzzword in the conservation space, as many see this sector as the key to financing conservation projects. While ecotourism and wildlife tourism often overlap, the terms are certainly not synonymous. A vital component of ecotourism is the idea of sustainable travel, which is not always the case with wildlife tourism.
If you would like to learn more about ecotourism, check out The Tiger Tool article unpacking this hot-button topic.
Tourism and Cats
With the massive economic and environmental footprint of nature tourism, it follows that this industry would have a direct effect on the stars of the show - the animals. Entire books have been written about the impacts of tourism on a number of different species, however, for this article we are focusing on the broader relationship between tourism and big cats.
To begin with, it is not possible to accurately categorize the greater impact of tourism on cats as positive or negative. Some areas of tourism have been hugely beneficial for cats, such as the revenue generated from sustainable safari tourism across parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. These profits are often reinvested into local conservation projects, protecting wild cats and creating local jobs. On the other hand, animal performances in circus-like shows are another type of animal-based tourism that you might not have immediately remembered. These operations are notoriously cruel and obviously represent the antithesis of protecting big cats.
Doc Antle and his crew of famously abusive tiger performers as featured in Tiger King. Source: Myrtle Beach Sun News
One of the best ways to understand how tourism interplays with cats is to look at real world examples. To illustrate this, let’s take a deeper look at tiger-tourism, a subset of the industry that truly captures the highs and lows of wildlife tourism.
Tigers
The world’s largest cat carries its weight in the global wildlife tourism industry. Tigers drive robust safari-based micro-economies across Asia that bring in millions of tourists every year. While almost no business practices are environmentally perfect, the tiger conservation community has largely reached a consensus that responsible safari-based ecotourism has beneficial effects on the surrounding tigers. This assertion has been tested across many tiger reserves and biologists have found a direct positive correlation between tourism and tiger populations.
A photo I captured of the Rescue Doc Films crew shooting the Hidden Tiger in India. Source: Mike McGovern
One of the most important roles of sustainable tiger tourism is protecting natural habitat. A successful tiger safari operation requires an entire ecosystem that can support a population of such large predators. Having this land set aside for tourism means the environmental benefits reach far past the impacts on tigers. A prime example of this is that the other species which share the national parks and reserves are given the opportunity to flourish in a protected space. One surprising benefit in many regions of Southern Asia is the protection of important watershed zones. Ranthambore National Park in India is amongst the most famous tiger reserves on the planet, but it is also the prominent watershed of the Chambal River. This region of India sees very little annual rainfall and the ecosystem services provided by the Ranthambore watershed supply vital ground water to this dry area.
An important clarification for the need of tiger ecotourism revolves around the alternatives. Unfortunately for tigers, much of the land where they live is also suited to support environmentally devastating industries, such as mining and large-scale agriculture. As a result, any land that is not expressly protected by federal laws will likely be exploited for its resources. One of the best examples of this can be found on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. There, tiger populations have been on a steady decline ever since palm oil harvesting, hardwood logging, and coal mining took root on the island in the 19th century. Now that these industries are firmly planted into the local economy, the fight to protect more primary forest has become exceedingly difficult. To make matters worse in Sumatra, the island also struggles with rampant poaching. Research has found that tourism helps prevent illegal hunting, as the constant visitor and park ranger traffic significantly increases surveillance.
If you would like to learn more about Sumatra’s environmental situation, check out The Tiger Tool’s article on the famous Indonesian Island!
Despite the allure of short term profits, tiger ecotourism is almost always an economically favorable decision over the long term. As an industry that does not deplete local resources, there is no finite return on investment. Hypothetically, tiger tourism can last in perpetuity. Beyond that, ecotourism is often a synergistic industry, meaning the growth of ecotourism promotes growth in other important fields.
The many tiger reserves across central India provide excellent examples of the long-term impacts of this transition away from unsustainable resource extraction. This central region of India is well known for world-class hardwoods, and in the early 1970s were rapidly deforesting tiger habitats to export the profitable wood. However, after the shocking results of India’s first tiger survey were released in 1972, the government announced a new project to protect tigers and their habitat. The result was not an economic depression, but instead a steady growth of a new safari tourism industry across the country. Today, India is a global leader in tiger tourism and has built an impressive economy around their wildlife reserves.
At this point, you may be fully sold on tourism as the remedy to all issues facing big cats. If tourism was always governed by a committee ensuring environmental and ethical responsibility, I would certainly agree. Sadly, this is not the case. There is a large portion of tiger based tourism that does the opposite of protecting the animals. These can be broken into two groups: ecologically damaging wildlife tourism and captive tiger tourism.
The first type, ecologically damaging wildlife tourism, is not unique to big cats. This essentially describes any kind of nature tourism that puts undue stress on a local environment. This category is vague by definition, and would encompass several issues including: litter left behind, encroachment on animals' space, noise or air pollution, excessive tourism infrastructure development, and much more.
Overcrowded safari areas can cause pollution and increased stress for wildlife. Source: Conservation India
The second type, captive tiger tourism, has become a massive issue facing big cats around the world. This sub-category of animal tourism ranks among the cruelest practices in the modern economy. Tigers are routinely beaten, drugged, and killed, all for profit. These operations usually operate with two primary functions - a service for guests to take photographs or interact with tigers, and a performance centered around the cats. Almost all of these facilities are deplorable, designed solely to optimize cost efficiency. While the United States roadside zoo network has recently been highlighted by Tiger King and a few other big-name publications, these practices take place all around the world. As long as these institutions continue to operate they serve as a sobering reminder that big cat tourism still maintains a dark side.
Tiger tourism very clearly represents the best and worst aspects of animal attractions. The relationship between tigers and tourism is quite direct and can generally be divided into positive and negative categories. But what about cougars? How does the ghost cat interact with the realm of public attention?
Cougars
Cougars’ relationship with tourism is perhaps the most complicated of all the big cats. Unlike lions, tigers, or jaguars, these cats are not world famous for safaris and they are much less frequently featured throughout wildlife media. To understand how tourism impacts cougars, it will be helpful to briefly first look at cougar behavior and how these cats found themselves in the position they are in today.
The global cougar population is much larger than that of lions or tigers. While estimations are not exact, the best approximation is currently around 40,000 cats. Cougars can be found as far north as Canada in North America and as far south as Patagonia in South America. Their significant range serves as a testament to cougar’s ability to adapt to a wide variety of environments. Cougars in the Amazon rainforest certainly live a very different life than those found in the Rocky Mountains. However, despite these differences in behavior, all mountain lions share a common characteristic: stealth.
Remaining inconspicuous is central to the behavior of cougars. Their hunting style leans heavily on surprising their prey, and centuries of being hunted by humans has taught the cats to stay out of open spaces. Unfortunately, this behavior means the cats are rarely seen, and makes the species a poor candidate for wildlife safaris. It is worth noting that Torres del Paine National Park in Chile has overcome these challenges and built a small ecotourism network around spotting wild cougars. This region supports a small, but stable mountain lion population and relies on a network of skilled cougar trackers to maintain semi-frequent sightings. Nonetheless, cougar behavior has mostly squashed any hopes of a large safari industry around these cats.
While traditional ecotourism seems to have reached a dead end with mountain lions, there are other types of wildlife tourism that better suit the species. In particular, their life in the shadows makes these cats a prime target for trophy hunters, who seek to kill the most elusive and impressive animals.
The introduction of hunting into the analysis of tourism’s impact on cougars is both complicated and significant. I should first acknowledge my original bias coming into this topic. As someone who has studied tigers for years, a species pushed to the brink of extinction by aggressive over-hunting, I was skeptical of any conservation benefits from hunting. However, after reading the literature regarding trophy hunting and cougars in North America it would be unreasonable to deny the positive effects. The most obvious impact came several decades ago when killing cougars was first restricted by state officials in efforts to maintain the species for future game hunting. The perverse ethics of protecting a species to kill its eventual offspring is another topic of discussion, but the end result was clear. Cougars in the western half of the United States were largely saved by the state departments in charge of hunting, and their desire to preserve America’s largest cat.
If you would like to learn more about cougars’ legal protection, read The Tiger Tool article linked on the button below.
Today, cougar populations in the United States are carefully monitored by state officials. Because the species does not hold the title of endangered and is legally hunted in several states, the term “management” is often used in place of “conservation.” Regardless of the terminology or motivations, the end goal of protecting the long-term future for cougars is shared. In the context of this article, hunting has been an important form of tourism for these cats that provides both a source of income and economic incentive for widespread protection. The question yet left unanswered is whether or not cougars need to maintain this hunting industry, or if the benefits of trophy hunting have already been realized.
The Essential Connection
Clearly the ways in which tourism impacts big cats is multifaceted and complicated. One aspect of this relationship everyone can agree on is that the lives of big cats around the world are shaped in one way or another by the invisible forces of human industry. As the world continues to demand economic incentives in decisions, it will be vital for big cat conservationists to leverage tourism as a potential upside. The human – animal connection is an essential element of moving successful conservation forward. Hopefully with time, we will begin to realize these cats have their own intrinsic right to life and ecotourism can become a positive externality, rather than a necessary condition for conservation.
