The Escalating Effects of Wildlife Tourism on Human-Wildlife Conflict.

Qingming Cui,Yuejia Ren,Honggang Xu

doi:10.3390/ani11051378

Abstract

Simple SummaryCommunities adjacent to protected areas usually face conflict with protected wildlife. Wildlife tourism is regarded as a tool to mitigate such conflict through bringing economic benefits to villagers and then increasing villagers’ tolerance of wildlife. We used qualitative methods to conduct a case study on a macaque tourism attraction in China and find that tourism may escalate rather than mitigate community–wildlife conflict. Provisioning food is a common way to attract wild animals to visit and stay in human activity areas. In the case of macaque tourism, anthropogenic food provision caused rapid population increase and more intra-group aggressive behaviors. More tourist–macaque interactions resulted in macaques becoming habituated to human’s presence. These ecological impacts on macaques led more invasion to the surrounding community and intensified resident–macaque conflict. Meanwhile, low community participation in tourism generated few benefits for residents and did not help alter residents’ hostile attitudes towards the macaques. Local residents gradually retreated from agriculture as the macaques became more intrusive. We propose a holistic model combining social and ecological perspectives to evaluate the role of wildlife tourism in resolving community–wildlife conflict. We suggest that wildlife tourism should minimize human–wildlife intimate interactions and food provision.Human–wildlife conflict is a barrier to achieving sustainable biodiversity conservation and community development in protected areas. Tourism is often regarded as a tool to mitigate such conflict. However, existing studies have mainly adopted a socio-economic perspective to examine the benefits of tourism for communities, neglecting the ecological effects of tourism. This case study of macaque tourism on a peninsula in China illustrates that tourism can escalate rather than mitigate human–wildlife conflict. Fifty-three stakeholders were interviewed and secondary data were collected to understand the development of rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) tourism and community–macaque conflict. The results show that food provision and tourist–macaque interactions rapidly increased the macaques’ population, habituation, and aggressive behaviors, which led them to invade the surrounding community more often and exacerbated human–macaque conflict. Meanwhile, low community participation in tourism generated few benefits for residents and did not help alter residents’ hostile attitudes towards the macaques. Local residents gradually retreated from agriculture as the macaques became more intrusive. A holistic approach to evaluating the role of wildlife tourism in resolving community–wildlife conflict is proposed and practical suggestions for alleviating such conflict are given.

Highlights

In the past few decades, protected areas have been one of the main tools for maintaining and improving biodiversity conservation [1,2,3,4]
The community–macaque conflict on the Nanwan peninsula has existed for a long time
The structures leading to these conflicts are presented presented in Figure natural food sources tourist–macaque interactions macaques community–macaque conflict tourism food provision agricultural food sources retreat

Summary

Introduction

In the past few decades, protected areas have been one of the main tools for maintaining and improving biodiversity conservation [1,2,3,4]. There are tensions between wildlife conservation and the development of communities adjacent to protected areas [5,6]. The establishment of protected areas deprives communities of natural resources and restricts industrial and agricultural development, suggesting that to conserve ecology and wildlife, those communities sacrifice economic opportunities [7,8,9]. Wild animals often cross the borders of protected areas and enter neighboring communities, causing human–wildlife conflict [10,11]. Local residents who suffer economic, social, and health losses may become hostile to wildlife and conservation, and even harm or kill wild animals for revenge [12,13]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion