Is tourism impacting pumas in the Torres del Paine UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in southern Chile?

Abstract

Ecotourism generates $7.6 trillion annually and supports 292 million jobs around the world, and because of these benefits, it has been emphasized as a conservation strategy. Ecotourism, however, is not the solution for every community, and there is growing evidence that tourism can have unintended consequences for local people and wildlife, unless well managed. Here, we assessed the relative impacts of anthropogenic activities related to tourism (e.g. road density, distance to ranches and camping areas) and prey distributions on puma occupancy and abundance in the open steppe habitat of the southeast portions of the Torres del Paine UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, where pumas are protected. In winter, puma abundance and occupancy were explained by both prey and anthropogenic metrics. In summer, puma abundance was explained by both prey and anthropogenic metrics, but occupancy only by anthropogenic metrics. Across both periods, puma abundance was only explained by anthropogenic metrics, and occupancy was explained by both prey and anthropogenic metrics. Guanacos, the most important prey species for local pumas, never appeared in any top model, except in summer, during which puma abundance was explained by lower not higher guanaco abundance. Not unexpectedly, puma abundance and occupancy were negatively correlated with trail and road density across all analyses. In the high tourism season of summer, roads had 2–3 times the impact on puma abundance than prey metrics in top models. During our study, the average number of monthly visitors per month in summer (November-January) was 892 % higher than winter (May- July). As a whole, we believe our analyses suggest that tourism may be negatively impacting pumas, but the severity of this impact remains questionable. Future work should include studying stress in puma populations experiencing heavy tourism, simultaneous with the work needed to understand relative thresholds of impact on puma fitness metrics (e.g. survival, hunting success). We believe our work also highlights the need for standards and guidelines to be created and adopted among those involved in puma tourism in Torres del Paine and beyond.